During my build, I had my bay pretty clean, painted, and had a general idea of what I wanted; red and black. As it got more complete and after all my little fixes, the bay got greasy, cluttered, messy, etc.
I'm looking at tidying it back up but am wondering what you guys think I should do.
Should I paint my intercooler + pipes black or should I polish everything up?
I'm going to weld my pipes to get rid of all those ugly couplers, get some venting bent up, and replace that horrid coolant hose (hey, it works...lol).

So, black or polish in your guys' opinions?

 

Polished. You will like it better in the long run i think. From personal experience, Black over time gets scrapped, chipped, dulled one way or another. Polished all you need to do is put a little shine on and looks great. some people dont like shiney stuff personally i look clean looking shiney stuff.

 

Yeah I'm iffy about it because I've never done "bling" before. As long as it was working, I was happy. But sometime soon I'd like to re-do a lot of things with my build...

 

how about you keep your hood closed. thats what its there for. hell, my engine bay is ugly as ****, but the car runs and drives. so i keep it shut. no worries.

 

hahaha that's the attitude I currently have. Nothing wrong with it, I'm just looking at a bit of a cleaner look, not a show stopper.

 

stop showering too. heck that's why they have axe spray right?

clean it. take pride in your work and polish what you can. it is not very hard to clean. use some de-greaser and then use some engine bay shine/polisher from your local parts store.

 

id give the engine a good washing first. then put a filter on the turbo, then wrap the hose in alluminum foil. blamo. show car.

 

Oh noez, Ive been running no filter on the front turbo, dangit!

 

I say powdercoat the piping black to match the rest of the theme of your engine bay. Polished would look nice, but black would be better imo.

My friend (speedjunkie) powdercoated all his piping black, his engine is black, the bay is black, and all the little accessories are polished. It is the hottest rotary engine bay I've ever seen (in person lol). I love it! Idk if I have any pics but I'll see if I can find any to post.

 

If you have the patients for polishing, go for it! Otherwise powdercoat. Maybe go the extra step and try to organize some other things in the bay. Throw a cooling panel on in front of the radiator crossmember and call it good.