I have an 84 z28 and my engine block,heads, intake and oil pan are blu......I'm going to replace it with a rebuilt 350....but people keep telling me that the color for chevy is "chevy orange" but blue happens to be my favorite color though......someone please steer me in the right direction....

 

1982 Factory color was Chevy Blue.
They changed to Black in 1983.
So for the factory look the engine should be Black.
Put if you like Blue paint it Blue.

 

i think blue would be pretty cool.

 

Light blue or darker blue......and do I need the 2000F degree paint of 500F?

 

500 should be fine.

Paint it whatever color you want. Its your car.

my engine is silver

 

it is pretty much a matter of personal choice . myself i prefer a gray/silver color . people tell me , you will see every small oil leak & dirt it collects . call me stupid , but i want to know of any leaks no matter how small . just my thoughts , good luck .

 

I painted an engine yellow... that was a mistake.. like Uncle Tom mentioned, everything shows...

John

 

I painted my old 305TPI block and heads pontiac baby blue. It always attracted the older croud at car shows. "Hey, you painted it the correct color for a poniac!" They'd always say to me. I thought it looked pretty cool too.

I'd say do it whatever color you want. Personally, I'm really not a huge chevy orange fan since everyones engine is chevy orange! I saw this engine paint color in lime green at the local parts store once. Always wanted to paint an engine that color haha.

 

yeah i think any color would be pretty sweet, and if its fast it'll make it even cooler.

though you dont want your engine bay to look like a crayon box

yellow engine, blue hoses, red wires, black air cleaner, aluminum intake, etc

 

For whatever reason, I'm a big fan of painting the block the stock color for that year vehicle. I painted the 350 I put into my IROC black, and the LSx that I'm building for it has been painted black too.

 

Light Blue would be correct for '82...and I'd recommend the 2000F paint. An engine is not something you want to have to paint twice assuming you're doing it right, which is time consuming.

 

The really high temp paint tends to have a really dull finish. The 500F paint is just fine for an engine.

 

Someone is going to ask, why did that paint the engine black? The price of not having to swap from one color to another and black engines run cooler than light color engines. I seen an article where they proved that and some people cannot comprehend the concept. Because they have always been told light colors are cooler. When you take a light source such as direct sunlight away the dark colors will let the heat escape ( under the hood ). Where as light colors and especially chrome will retain heat.

 

That's true. If you're going to run your engine without coolant in space where thermal radiation is the only way to cool it, then black is great. Here on earth though, you can paint it any color you want as long as you're not going to loose sleep over the extra .001 degree in temperature you picked up by not painting it black.

 

Or compensate by just using one less coat. I'm willing to bet that the thickness of the paint has 10x more effect than the color.

 

As from experieince, I used some 1200° Paint and it always came off my exhaust ports, but I got some higher 1500°F paint and it is still on there... I recommend the higher paint temp, from personal experience.

 

this.

my FORMULA is red so i painted it red and eventually to go with the cast look of the plenum and intake im going to put the vette magnesium valve covers on it. and when i do my 83, the car is med sand grey so i'll paint it some variation of puter or light charcoal.

otherwise i would paint them black. as for leaks, my motor has been in my car for the past 5 years and other than dust its clean with no oil visible. it shows leaks, its getting fixed.

i think i agree withJohn on the yellow, that and white are the only 2 colors i wouldnt use on an eng.

 

I will admit however, until it got dirty, Yellow looked killer... then it was virtually impossible to clean and make look nice again.

john

 

the only way to keep it nice is to drive it little or not at all, thats no fun.

 

Like said quite a few times, paint it what you want.

For those wondering what was blue and orange? It came from the 2nd gens. All 305's were light blue and 350's were orange. Since there wasn't any 350's in the third gens until 87 the early third gen V8s were blue until they started to paint all motors black. My 86 305 was black. Not sure on the years this started and ended but I do know that most 2nd gens were like this.

 

No, that's incorrect. '76 was the last year for orange in any Chevy, whether it was a 350 or not.

 

So what would be the stock colour for an 87 ta? Someone p.m me this info please, as I'm going as close to factory as I can, Thanks in advance.

 

Semi-gloss black

 

Up to 76 = Chevy orange
76-82 = Blue
83-up Black