In my seemingly perpetual search for another car, I came across a nice little '84 GS (mf pretty early in '83) that (I guess) has been sitting with a bunch of other bad trade-ins from a local dealership for six years. 94k miles. It's held up okay [no real rust that I could see], but the engine is seized. It had no spark plugs in it [so much for ATF trick]... but one thing caught my eye: the rotor housings were gold tinted. I couldn't tell if they were painted, but if they were, I couldn't scratch it with my fingernail.

It's been sitting for too long for me to be too interested[hydraulics and rubber anything shot, interior real bad from the sun, but I still haven't seen a cracked 84-85 dash] however, the gold-colored housings did stand out in my mind. All the accessories were on the car and it was all stock, so it would seem out of character for the female previous owner [I guess, from the bill of sale in the glove box] to have painted the housings. Maybe it was a rebuilt engine? Anyone know any shops that painted them like that? Any theories?

 

Bad taste? Thats my theory. I paint my iron housings Ford blue and leave the rotor housings aluminum on my engines.

 

If they're nitrided, I leave them natural looking. If they're not, a little black engine paint to make them look stock again. The rotor housings, I'll either leave them alone or paint 'aluminum' with aluminum colored engine paint.

I haven't had the urge to paint my engines any other colors yet. Maybe my next rebuild will have a little splash of color.

Some of Tom's rotaries (on my website) have been painted. Click my www button if you're interested. Choose the Our Cars link (hasn't been updated in a long while).

 

Copy and paste or drag and drop. Typical Geocities... you know what to do.

http://www.geocities.com/cd23c01/black01.jpg

 

What gets me is that it was only the rotor housings.

 

I would never paint the rotor housings. I like the aluminum look.