Cleaning and Paint question

I have been working on this 20HP for a few days and decided to try to make it look a little better. It was pretty badly corroded.


A little Lysol Scrubbing Bubbles and a brush and a no small supply of elbow grease and it cleaned up pretty good.


My dad says he wants to keep this motor since it is an electric start. He is 76 and has no intention of ever pull starting another motor... I was thinking of trying to get some more of the corrosion off and then maybe paint the lower 1/3 or whatever seems best. Do any of you guys know what color will be closest to a match and some pointers on a process?

If you want to paint it (and I'm not gonna tell you it's worth painting ) step #1 is to really clean any grease and dirt away. Engine de-greaser, the type that comes in a spray can and foams, as well as brillo pads, are great for this. Put the soap on, scrub where you can, hose it off, and repeat.

Once you have it clean go at it with a paint scraper and remove any chipping/loose paint. Then sand all the edges and the entire area to be painted, doesn't need to be perfect like an auto-body job on a corvette but you want to feather out the edges a bit as well as clean off any crappy pain or water stain. The more you sand the better it will look.

After sanding wash it again to remove dust, let it dry, wipe the area to be painted down with alcohol or mineral spirits, wipe it again to be sure it's dry and free of the solvent, and you are about ready to paint. Put some Vaseline on any parts you do not want to paint (like zincs or black plastic parts)

Another option to the above if you really want to go wild is to get a bunch of paint stripper - problem with that stuff is it eats rubber, plastic, anything not metal - so it can be very hard to use on a large area without potentially damaging something. Also it can be a pain if you get it into an area that you can't reach well, as it will half dissolve the paint but will leave a crappy layer of paint there that won't hold a topcoat at all - basically if you are gonna strip it you want to really strip it clean. It's probably more practical just to de-grease and sand.

As far as paint - no sense trying to match color as it won't match. The best and most readily available spray paint I know of is Rust Oleum "Fast Dry Aluminum Primer" (comes in white), followed by their "Automotive" spray paint - all available at Walmart, auto parts stores, etc.. The "automotive" spray paint seems a little better than standard stuff, goes on better and dries faster, is supposed to be more chip & fade resistant too. I don't know about Chrysler but I really do not like the OMC brand touch up paint, takes forever to dry, even longer to fully cure, is not very solvent resistant, and has a tendency to crinkle up if you go over it with a topcoat too soon - better off with Rust Oleum that works better, which you can buy down the street for half the $$.

If you have a lot of chipping you may want to do this in two steps - #1 put the primer on, let it completely dry #2 you will notice some places where the paint you went over seemed OK but lifted up - when the primer is dry you can then chip those spots off, re-sand the area, and re-prime, them move to the topcoat.

Jon

Thanks for the tips. I think I can invest in a couple cans of paint for this one. But, I do understand where you are coming from. A lot of people aren't fans of Chrysler anything. And, I admit to being one of them for most of my life.

We had two Chrysler outboards when I was a kid. One was a 55 on a boat that was incredibly heavy. Terribly hard to start. The other was an 8 hp that I have a whole lot of sentimental feelings about. It was even harder to start and keep running but it did save me and my buddy Ready Red from an almost certain hideous death at the hand (paws?) of a very ticked off sasquatch back in the early 80s.

I do enjoy waking them up...the motors...not the sasquatches. I have a couple that look exactly like the one that saved us from the 'squatch. They just run a whole lot better.