POWDER COATING ENGINES and WHEELS

Is this a show car or a car that you will be using on a daily or even weekend bases?

Its for funning around. Its a leftover freom my midlife crisis . Ill never show it, those guys are NUTZ.

Doesn't sound good to me. My thinking is that all else aside, powder coating the engine would be a good way of insulating it, which you don't want. Doesn't sound like a bad idea on the exhaust, though. You do want the heat out the pipes instead of under the hood.

Does "American billet" wheels mean aluminum? If so, I would consider the possibility that they are heat treated. If they are, well, that powder coating process involves some fairly high temperatures.

Im sorry, the billet wqheela are the machine cut aluminum or magnesium wheels that used to be called "mag" wheels. I have a set of Mustang billets and I dont wanna keep MUSTANG wheels on a Cougar(very tacky to be even seen in the company of anything Mustangian).

So youre sqaying that powder coating the engine may prevent heat diss? Hmmm , never even considered that . The engine is water cooled you know, does that make a difference in your opinion?
Ive seen ceramic coated manifolds on some cars down at bDOVER and they gave a very cool "industrial" look to the engine (Course they were a white ceramic look).

I really do think the increased temp would be significant. Now, the gauge will probably read normal, but cooling from the cooling is not uniform. Best, but unglamourous coating for the engine would be heat resisting ultra flat black. My concerns may be more theoretical that practical, however.

Ceramic coated exhaust manifold sounds way cool - figuratively speaking. Again, you want the heat going out the back of the exhaust pipe, not under the hood. Dumping engine heat under the hood is a good tradeoff, however.

Im gonna check that whole thing out, THANKS for the heads up. NOW whaddya think about powder coating the wheels instead of the metallic cut wheels. The Merc Cyclone (a body take off of the cougar) used wheels that matched the cars paint job.
I think the ELimanators did the same but most of them were this really crappy lime green color. Mine is a nice warm metallic yellow.

I am sure I have seen engine blocks at the powder coating place I use.

Google shows several sites that talk about it. Some like it, some don't like it.

Talk to your powder coater. They should be able to tell you if they have done it before and how it worked out for people.

One of the issues seems to be stripping it later if you don't like the color.

They do make a "rhino skin" type of flat black powder. I wonder whether the dimpled surface makes for better heat dissipation.
So parados, youve seen engine blocks powder coated? My question started with doing mine in a Ford blue . Ive seen the old chevies done with a red block but no Fords.
Oh, I do recall one car (A Crown Vic) that some idiot painted his block WHITE

I was just thinking about this the other day, Roger, FM. I was wondering how much effect air cooling had on a block, obviously it's something and obviously it's dependent on OS air temps.

If there was an appreciable effect, could it not be handled by a lower temp thermostat?

Why can airplane engines be air cooled, the increased surface area from the numerous vanes?

Ditto, I think the issue of overheating due to powder coating may not be a serious porblem. I visited several sites where they had powder coated blocks on street rod, where the color was chosen to match the paint on the car.

I saw one guy on the Ford site who used a really expensive Dupont custom paint on the block.

My big problem is how easy are oil glops and gunk to clean off ?

That reminded me, I took my thermostat out of the Cougar just because she overheated a lot before I had the engine rebuilt and tricked.

If air cooling was to be an appreciable portion of the cooling load, then wouldn't there be different design configurations for vehicles destined to run in Barrows, Alaska, and those designed to run in Death Valley, CA?

I'd have a seriouse look at chrome for the engine

1. Aircraft go faster than cars - much more convective cooling effect.
2. It's cooler up there - 2.5 deg. F per 1000 ft elevation - winter & summer.
3. Air cooled aircraft engines are all radial - high frontal area and much higher surface/volume ratios than in-line liquid cooled engines. The aluminum fins help too.

Air cooled radial engines are in some respects simpler and more resistent to combat damage than liquid cooled engines, however they also usually have a lower power density (hp/cu in displacement) and a larger frontal area => higher drag)

WW beatles had reliable, rugged - but small - air cooled engines.

Back in the day, I worked on numerous opposed cylinder configurations, so far as I know, all from Continental and Lycoming. They worked with a sort of three dimensional jigsaw puzzle called cylinder baffling that separated the upper, high pressure section from the lower pressure lower section. Every bit of air coming through the cowling passed around each cylinder. Never saw one coated or painted, except for an orange band indicating they were acceptable for chrom piston rings.

I'm pretty sure the absence of coatings had more to do with inspection than cooling. I'm also pretty well convinced the blackout paint on the hoods of some performance cars was primarily for show. Still, some highways coming out of the Mojave have signs suggesting you turn off you air conditioner in the summer. Anyhow, color of coatings are more taste than function.

George, you mean they still make radial engines? Never did figure out the cam rings on those darn things.

I doubt that they're made any more. However Navy AD (Skyraiders), powered with an R-3350 were flying in Vietnam through the early 1970s (an old roomate of mine bagged a MIG 21 in one of them - an interesting story). The T-28 (a Navy basic trainer with an R-1820 engine saw lots of continued use for decades because it was rugged, highly maneuverable with great cockpit visibility, and, for its size, overpowered.

The question had to do with air cooled aircraft engines, and all I kew of (but the one you described) were radial.

I never knew how they worked - I just flew 'em. While in basic training I had a sudden master rod failure just after takeoff in a T-28 . That was memorable.

Heh! I had a master rod failure - in a hoisting engine called an air tugger. Seems that if you remove the cylinder in which the master rod operates and don't keep the rod centered in the hole, the master rod rotates around the crank and one other piston moves far enough into the crankcase that the rings expand and freeze the entire engine. If it had been an aircraft engine, I would have known better.

Only radial I ever worked on was the Pratt & Whitney R-985. At that time, the Beech 18 was still popular. With 18 external push rod tubes, she was a flying oil leak.

Cant say i've ever had rod failure when using my air tugger.

Is a four cylinder radial arrangement like I was describing? It's not a failure, exactly. More like a necessity of design, and it can only happen when the cylinder housing the master rod is removed for maintenance.

What do you use them for, dadpad? The ones I worked with were used with a snatch block to hoist materials to the upper levels of coal fired power plants during overhauls, or turn arounds as some call them. They spent much of the year in storage.

but they couldnt run while upside down