I was looking at the Callaway C4 Corvette, it has the same engine as most of our third gens, L98 TPI, only the Callaway has twin turbo added. The intake/throttle body looked pretty cool so I figured I'd give it a shot to see what I could do.

Only did the throttle body plate right now, it actually turned out pretty good. Let me know what you guys think.

Here is a link to the Callaway intake
http://redwood.smugmug.com/Cars/Car-...57_pLrbp-L.jpg

 

looks pretty good, howd you do it?

 

Got a can of silver spray paint and a matte black can.
Took the plate off and sprayed it all silver, about 4 coats. Let it sit overnight and then taped the "TUNED PORT INJECTION" off the masking tape and used a razor blade to cut off the access tape so only the letters were covered. Sprayed the plate with about 5-6 coats of the black matte. After 3 hours I peeled the tape off and that was the result.

 

Looks good, thinking about doing something similar.

I'll probably just paint the whole thing and then just sand back the raised letter surface.

 

Nice touch. I think the sanding technique would be much easier though. There are too many cuts with the razor blade and the original finish could be brought to a smooth finish.

 

Not trying to sound like a jerk but you do know you can buy ones of the plates in many different colors & styles from ebay and other sites. I have a black one that has GTA on it.

 

^true. I have a polished one that says "WS6 performance package". However, painting is cheaper and he succeded in his goal of matching the look of the Callaway plate.

 

I Painted the Plate on a TPI Unit I put on an Iroc I built for a guy. Just painted the plate, then sanded the letters.

 

MNformula350 - that intake looks awesome! I've got a few ideas floating around right now for mine. Hopefully I can get some time this weekend and do a little more work on mine.

 

Or buy a blank cover & design your own instead of buying one anybody else can buy.

 

What's the best method for polishing the TPI parts?

 

i did my plate the same way when the car was TPI back in 05

 

Was toying around with painting the TB plates just for fun. I think it came out pretty nice. Was flip flopping on which one looked better, but I think I'm going to go with the green lettering. Going to repaint the screws green to match the letters.



I also painted the valve covers and fuel rails to match the plenum.

 

Here's mine, aluminum plate painted flat black with stainless overlay, don't mind the dust