Central Park

last week i managed to find a 5 speed gearbox with all the trimmings for my little project car.so on monday nite i gave it a good going over with some ali cleaner, a kind of mild acid which really eats into the dirt an grime,and when washed off with a high pressure steamer, and it came out looking a whole lot better. This gave me the enthusiasm to paint it up to a real nice clean factory fresh finish. So tonite i stayed on at work, to see what i could do to brighten things up. Firstly i needed to scrub the gear box with some scotchbrite material to rid it of any left over bits of dirt, and also to key up the surface for some etch primer to be sprayed on. Then i removed anything i could that wasnt supposed to be painted, and masked the rest of the stuff off i didnt want to be silver. Seeing as the evening was really warm in the garage this all dryed off quite quickly. Next came the silver rattle can, and couple of coats later i decided to grab a coffee while it dryed off. The next stage was to put a couple of fine coats of clear lacquer on and leave it for a little while to build up a base coat, before putting some more thicker layers on. This should make it really resistant to chips, and easy to keep clean in the future. i was really pleased with the finished gearbox, it should definatly brighten up the engine bay when its all fitted. Trouble is, now i feel i might have to do the rest of the engine to match!!