Now to painting the valve cover. I used a wire brush attachment on a drill to clean the valve cover then I used denatured alcohol to clean it. First I sprayed some self etching primer so the paint would stick to the aluminum, and then finished with high temp silver:
Done painting:
Injector lines painted as well:
At this point, my car has no door locks and no headlights so I had to fix these. I bought a lock set from prothe. The door locks are very poor quality but the ignition lock and hatch lock are ok. I can't really complain because it was only $27 shipped:
Drilling a hole in the ignition to get the lock cylinder out:
New lock in:
Prothe's door handles/locks were poor quality. I was pretty disappointed but they were pretty inexpensive and you get what you pay for. The rubber seals were too small and low grade so they didn't seal very well. I had to use super glue for the seal to stick to the door handle, and globs of RTV to seal them to the door so water wouldn't get in the lock area. The lock mechanism isn't the same dimension as the OEM ones so it sometimes is very hard to open the door. Also, I had to enlarge the screw opening with a dremel in the handle so the screw would fit.
I used lots of RTV to seal the door handle (I need to wash the car). The plastic insert also doesn't fit too well.
Now I can at least lock the doors and start the car with the same key. But I have no headlights. So I bought a badgeless dual round grill and some lights. I have a westy radiator support though. I don't want to spend $100 for a new radiator support, so I made my support work. First I took out the square headlight buckets to make room for the round headlights.
Drilling holes:
Used some long nuts and bolts to mount the lights (didn't get a picture of the mounted lights, but they just fit on the studs and I used more nuts to attach them)
All finished (the tub under the car is to catch all the oil that leaks):
Dual rounds:
At this point, I found that only the left headlight works. I tested the wiring and the right side doesn't get 12 volts like it should. So more wiring work is needed under the hood before I can drive the car at night.
I drove the car around, and there is still a very loud metallic whine (sounds like a super charger). It sounds like something in the engine because it increases with RPM. The sound only comes when the car is warmed up. Does anybody know what it could be? I will try uploading a video later...
So many problems... :evil: