You need to clean up those dust shields and hubs to go with your spiffy crossmember and A arms!

If the heater hoses are of unknown age, give consideration to replacing them while the engine is out. Much easier to replace while the engine is out (or at least the head is off).

They’ve moved onto the engine, she was pretty manky so a good clean needed and a broken tooth on the timing gear. Cam is in also.

Front panel came up fantastic, just two wee areas of rust.

The powder coaters have almost finished the GT wheels, they look good all silver so the question now is do I go ahead and paint the centres black?

Invest in a roll of self-adhesive black vinyl (like Fablon but i'm not sure if that brand is around these days), cut out circles and fix to the centre of the wheels. That way if you don't like it, you can (fairly) easily remove them - paint is a bit more tricky! :thumbs_up:

Painting over powder coating is not without problems. Even the satin powder coated parts that I have on my car probably have a finish that is too slick for paint to reliably adhere to it. You probably need to media blast the centers with walnut shells or some mild abrasive to put some tooth on the powder coat. Scuffing with a 3M scuff pad might work; but, the centers have a lot of contours so it might be difficult to get an even scuff. The other thing to take into consideration is whether the chemistry of the paint will be compatible with the powder coat. You don't want a solvent that is going to attack the powder coat.

You can do clear powder coat over a base powder coat finish so you might be able to do a black powder coat over your silver centers. However, I don't know whether the base has to be matte or has to be media blaster prior to the clear being put on

Yeah the plan is to prep for 2k or epoxy then 2k but I’ll check with the powdercoaters when I collect. I wouldn’t just paint over anything without proper prep.

If you want to do black in the center, I am curious as to why you would not ask the powder coaters if they can do a nice gloss black finish on the centers? If the powder coaters say "we can do that" you have the advantage of dealing with a single vendor. If you take the rims to a separate shop and have them spray 2K on the centers and you get a subsequent coating failure, neither vendor is likely to take responsibility for the failure.

Of course I asked, they only do a single colour. I will be spraying the black.

Please excuse my ignorance but I'm curious, do you mean epoxy primer then 2k colour(black)? As I understand it 2k means two component(colour or primer with hardener) and isn't that what epoxy is? I've never understood why it is referred to as epoxy primer as opposed to 2k primer, or is there a difference?