The lip below the windscreen had some small rust holes and was ugly:
And there were some welds in the corners that I wanted to remove:
After cleaning the surface rust away with wire brush I grinded the welds a bit.
Couldn't really get them perfect but at least they weren't so eye catching as before. The small pinholes in the center were a bit more problematic. As welding wasn't really an option, I decided to fill the holes with lead. I bought a bar of it, paste and a wooden paddle and got to work. This was my first time working with lead but it proved surprisingly easy.
I cleaned the metal as good as I could and spread the paste on it. Next I used a torch to heat the area until the paste turned bright. I cleaned everything again and dug out the lead. It melted easily with the torch and I dropped a few pieces on the holes. While keeping it soft with heat, I spread it around with the paddle. After repeating a couple of times, the holes were filled.
I filed the lead smooth until it was good enough for me. Then it was time to prevent the rust from spreading any more. I applied some rust stopped to the lip.
Hopefully it was enough so the paint wont start bubbling later. Finally I applied some filler to the worst places to smooth them out more. Then it was time to attack the dirt. The engine bay had had almost 50 years to gather grime, oil, grease and other nasty stuff and I had to get all of it out before paint. Power washer wasn't an option in my garage or yard so manual cleaning was the only way to go.
I ended up spending many nights scraping, brushing and wiping every nook and cranny in the engine bay but finally it was spotless. That of course was not enough preparation for paint and I dug out my sanding paper and went through all surfaces with a few different grids. Some aching fingers later it was finally time to start spraying so I masked all surfaces I didn't want to paint.
I also cleaned the surroundings in the garage to minimize the amount of dust in the air. Naturally my area was not suitable for any kind of serious painting but was enough for the engine bay. The air would be filled with paint so I wore a protective suit.
The paint I chose as primer was grey Color Matic 1K Epoxy.
First layer that I sprayed was really light just to bring out any uneven surfaces and to see how the paint reacted with the old layers. The light gray color was perfect for seeing the places I needed to sand further.
Most of the paint spread out evenly but there were some places where the new primer reacted with the old pain.
Getting rid of all the wrinkles proved pretty difficult. I tried sanding the areas back to bare metal, let the paint dry for a week between layers, cleaned everything many times, put up light and heavy layers but always some wrinkles would pop up. Finally I had had enough and decided to try Motox paint from Motonet that had worked really well before. I used matte black this time as they grey color had already done its job.
The new, cheap paint went on perfectly without any reactions with the old layers. I guess I should have used the old and tested materials immediately instead of fighting with the new, more expensive paint for weeks. After a few layers of primer, I was finally ready for the actual top coat. For that I used VHT satin black. It went on perfectly and after three layers I had a really nice looking engine bay.
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