This is another one of my stupid questions. I spent some time today trying to cleanup my engine bay somewhat. It needs a LOT of work. For instance, buried way underneath the ABS system I found an old rodents nest.



Anyway, on the drivers side of the engine bay is the cruise control system. The aluminum (?) top is corroded and rather ugly. At first I thought that it may have had a cover over it at one time, but the FSM doesn't show anything. Any suggestions on ways to clean it up so it doesn't look so bad? I know it is like putting lipstick on a pig, but I'm improving it a little bit at a time. Today I removed and painted a couple of the metal brackets on the passenger side.

 

Pull the unit out of the engine bay and disassemble it. Once you remove the phillips head screws from the top, the large "serving tray" part of it separates from the servo mechanism underneath. You can paint it in the same fashion as the other misc brackets you mentioned. Remeber...prep is everything. And BTW it's steel not aluminum. I too am painting all of my misc brackets. As a matter of fact, I have three brackets in the oven right now.

 

Thanks. I'll give it a try. I've used both a flat black and gloss black paint on the different parts. Maybe I'll think about silver....

 

I like the aluminum look.

See what you think...sorry it turned out blurry but you get the idea.

 

I had all my dumb colored steel brackets powercoated silver to match the car , I polished all of the alum .

 

Today I just painted that same bracket a gloss black. My car is black. I'll experiment. That bracket does look good in silver though. The inside of my engine bay is a real mess. I'm trying to clean it up one piece/section at a time. Of course, I can't get at lots of it and am afraid to take apart and move too many things. Half the time I don't even know what it is that I'm looking at, but I'm learning...

BTW, I hate to sound too completely ignorant, but what is that cable in your photo? I certainly don't have one.

 

I'm pretty sure thats the throttle cable, and if your car is driveable I can assure you, you have one. In his picture it is simply disconnected.

 

OK, I couldn't figure out what cable would be on the passenger side.

 

POLISH it!!! LoL...I'm a polishing fiend so I'd suggest removing it and polishing it. It'll look great. The other alternative is to do what I did and ditch it completely. It's entirely uselss along with P/S and A/C

 

Yeah, its my throttle cable in the pic. It's not in the correct place because my engine is not in the correct place right now . So while it's off visiting friends I'm taking advantage of the easy access I have to every part that is corroded and painting them. Some parts are receiving an aluminum colored engine paint and others are getting black paint. As you can tell, I've also pulled the heater core metal tubes and brought them back to a happy place .

 

It looks really good. I'm seriously hoping that I never have to have my engine pulled. OTOH, that is the only way that some parts of my engine bay, including the engine are going to get cleaned up. A prior owner much have put belt dressing on the belts or something at one time and that crap is all over the engine bay. Everything is coated with it and it does NOT want to come off. One problem is that it makes wiring harnesses and various part very hard to identify. Second problem is that I thing the coating of gunk has to hold heat and may make the engine run hotter. I've only owned the car for 3 months so I've never driven it in hot weather.