One of the things that is hard is to keep things looking nice within a reasonable budget. Some people may take a grunged out part and either replace it or send it to a powder coating shop. For me I decided to take a different approach to see how much I could do with a can of High-Temp Aluminum colored paint. I wanted to make the intake look like it was new, but the results achieved were better than new in my opinion.
I started with a simple clean and degrease with my favorite degreaser product. After that I simply taped it off and painted it. I bought some new accessories — chrome hex head intake port plugs from Summit Racing — and installed my new AutoMeter temperature sender for the gauges I was installing. All in all this was a simple, quick process that can be done for many parts. The finish has held up nicely for a few years. The only problem I ran into was that when troubleshooting a vacuum leak at the carb I sprayed a bit too much carb cleaner that put a slight imperfection on the intake finish. Other than that it has held up better and longer than what I had expected.
