Well being 16 and poor sucks, probably about as much as poor college students. Anyway, I was getting sick of my dirty, rusted air intake, so i decided to do something about it. And all you really need is so paint and well....some stickers. Yeah the stickers part does sound a little weird but i liked the way it came out. All i did was sand down the air intake to the best of my ability, clean it off and start painting it, after 3 coats i was pretty satisfied. Put on some white lettering to make it stand out and called it a day. Now ill admit, it looks very out of place with all the other.....crap in there, but its a start right? And yes i plan on cleaning up a lot of other stuff, including the actual intake hose itself.

 

Looks good. Dont go to crazy with the paint tho. I let one of my friends paint my engine bay when i was working on my motor. I came back and there wasent a thing there that he dident paint black.

 

Haha thanks, yeah i dont think im gonna paint much else, mostly wipe off other things and try to shine up some other stuff. Right now im most concerned with getting some money to fix my winter car and then more money to fix the dent in the poor camaro.

 

It's a good start. If you follow that same procedure for most of the other parts under the hood, your engine bay will look great.

But, like Necro said, don't just rattle-bomb everything in black. Repaint black stuff black (like your valve covers, idler pulley, strut towers & brake booster), but everything else should stay it's original color. There are paints you can use to redo the non-black items, and a little elbow grease on the blue body paint will go a long way, as will a new coolant bottle & new washer fluid bottle.

Just by looking at your picture, I think your biggest improvement will come from carefully cleaning everything. Start with a good degreaser (I like Greased Lightning Orange), and spray down the whole engine bay with it, and scrub what you can reach with a plastic brush. Add a little water and scrub again, then rinse everything. That'll get rid of 95% of the crud & dust. After that, remove what you can (within reason), clean it, and clean everywhere you can reach. Get some sort of armor-all type of product and wipe down all of the hoses & plastic (then wipe it down again with a dry rag to get rid of the extra armor-all) before you put it back together. The difference will be impressive.

 

Do your winsheild wipers work? If not yank the bottle out

same thing with the air

 

Actually the a/c doesnt work, it needs to be recharged but i havent really gotten to it, i may yank it just like you said, summer in maine isnt too bad as long as youve got ttops and you dont live in the city.

Thanks for the tips 85iroc, hopefully ill have it looking new again soon.

 

I dont think those stickers are gonna stay on that lid for long, the heat is gonna make them start to peel up.

 

I honestly would have agreed with you, but me and my brother did this around the end of march. And after all the summer driving (even had to deal with overheating issues) theyre still looking good, i was suprised.

 

Yanking the AC looks like hell if you don't finish the job by putting in a non-ac heater box. Nothing looks worse than the remanants of the AC without the whole system there. My car has been like that for years and it drives me nuts.

 

but Idk what the heck im taking out

 

Be careful here ... Armor-All under the hood translates into Dirt Magnet and Cracked Hoses. Use it VERY sparingly if at all.

 

Use Pledge furniture polish....works great, doesn't attract dirt, and smells lemony fresh!

 

WD-40 is a great under hood cleaner, even works on the clear bottles. Brake clean works wonders too.

Big E

 

I remember when I first got my 91 RS it the engine bay looked very much like yours. Do what these guys are telling you, they are right because I have done what they have mentioned, check out my engine bay appearance over the seasons.. I was 19 in 2004 when I got my 1991 Camaro RS 305 TBI AUTO



This season I got a new INTAKE MANIFOLD and TBI unit, cleaned up everything using engine degreaser and rags, the results were obvious and also resulted in me getting lots of cuts on my arms and hands.


Didn't maintain the engine bay, just kept on driving it everyday....


Not maintained....


Yesterday I grabbed my brothers pressure washer and stole some gas from my neighbor... and just wen't right to work and ended up with this with in hours...
September 2006 (AUTUMN)



You see, it just takes time and dedication and lots of effort and patience and some money and gas :-P
But at the end of the day you'll be happy!

 

that's the very first thing I did when I got mine. sanded it down, painted it with primer, sprayed it with gloss black. After about a year, it still looks good. Just because you don't have much money doesn't mean you have to drive around with a dirty car. GOOD JOB!!!

 

Hey it's good to see a fellow 16 year-old into thirdgens.

I've been here since I was 14 and I've learned quite alot here. Being 16 isn't so bad, just manage your time and money well and you can have fun with the rest of 'em.

 

Nice job Psycho, Now I feel even lazier! Where do you buy that elbow grease anyway?! LOL Looks good.

 

Boy does that take me back to 1982! I knew I wasn't the only one that started like that ....