jdurhan

On my 327/350 hp 1966 the valve covers look like someone may have painted them silver, whats the best way to restore finish.

As far as Intake goes whats the best way to make it look like it should?

Is there someone who I can send them to or do it myself ?

Thanks

62Jeff

This thread should cover your questions pretty well...
http://forums.corvetteforum.com/show...=restore+valve

BarryK

different schools of thought and various methods used.

1. send them to someone like Jerry McNeish for his "reskinning" process. Many people swear by it and they do look excellent when the intake is returned. Will look like brand new freshly cast aluminum.
If I recall his price is in the $125 or so range for an intake.
Link is here:
http://www.z28camaro.com/restosvcs.html

2. do it yourself. many people use products like oven cleaner or Mag Wheel cleaner to clean up aluminum intakes and say the results come out well.

3. do it yourself by glass beading it with low pressure. A lot of guys will emphatically tell you not to do this as it supposably removes some of the surface texture off the intake and ruins the surface but others, including myself, have done it with excellent results. The key is low pressure.

Here are pics of my '65 and my '78 intakes that I glass beaded to clean them up:

The '65 after glass bead blasting. left raw and unpainted: Sorry, no "before" pics of it)


"Before" of the '78 intake:


After glass beading the '78 intake:


After glass beading AND painting the '78 intake:


I didn't paint the '65 because my understanding is that they were not painted at the factory except for some overspray on the sides.
The '78 was painted because they were painted at the factory.

I did have a chance right after doing my '65 intake and valve covers to compare them against ones done by Jerry McNeish and I'll say that after carefully studying both sets for a a good 10 minutes I personally couldn't find a bit of differences between them at all no matter how hard i looked.

With glass beading you need to be very careful how much pressure you use and be sure to clean it thoughly inside and out to get all remaining beads out of the inside of the intake afterwards but if you have a cabinet to blast with at home it's a "free" job.
Sending it to Jerry will cost you $$ but it will turn out very well.

A can't answer much on trying to clean it yourself with chemicals like oven cleaner - others have done it but I never tried

jdurhan

Very Impressive work you did, but I dont have a glass bead machine so I think Jerry might be myanswer.

Dicecal

I just had 2 sets of valve covers reskinned by Jerry McNeish. I have to say, I was dissapointed with both of them. There are scrapes, blots..and various other defects in the finish. If anyone else has any other solutions, I'd like to know as well.

jdurhan

Dicecal

Working on posting pics.....

BarryK

I don't have a cabinet either but a friend was generous enough to allow me to use his.
Are you a member of a local Vette club? If so, ask to see if anyone in the club has a blasting cabinet and will let you use it.

if not, send them to Jerry.
i'm sorry to hear that Dicecal had a bad experience with his work and i'm not discounting that experience but the vast majority of Jerry's customers are very pleased with his work.
Like any vendor of parts or service things can and will happen at times that someone isn't completely happy for one reason or another.
I sent my 2818 carb out to one of the top respected and recommended rebuilders and I was VERY unhappy although everyone else seemed to have gotten good work and service from him. I ended up having to take the carb apart and fix the problems he sent it back with myself since he didn't stand behind his work and literally told me on the phone "too bad, nothing I can do about it". Unfortunately it happens.

Dicecal

They were packed well, so the scrape did not happen in shipping. They are better than the first set I got from Jerry, but I don't want to put these on my car either. Sold the first set on EBAY at a loss, and I figured I'd give Jerry another try since there has been good feedback here on the forum. There are several other scrapes, but these are the biggest eye sores. And yes, these were not there when I sent them to him.

John E. DeGregory

Thanx for the free plug on valve cover refinishing. I will tell you it's not that easy for either me or you as the car owner. A lot of felllows send us VC's that look like they came out of the titanic. Pitted, deep gouges and otherwise abused. The end result is only us good as the valve cover itself. For a few extra bucks Randy will sand the crap out of them to remove some of the light defects but not all of them.; If your valve cover has already peeled meaning it has a deep deep defect like the one in the pic(in center of the script) then you best find another cover. We refinish a ton of VC's but don't advertise much as basically I just restore the old FI's. But to compliment the restored units I like to have the valve covers done so the castings match. I don't go on CF much so I better stop here as it might be unethical to push our business. So if you want to know any other info email me at johndegreg@aol.com

Turn around time for the valve covers varies. Typically around 3 weeks but after coming off two big great shows-Corvette and Fall Carlisle we do have a bunch to do. But since the shows are over for me until Spring we are here workin out butts off.
By the way you may not like this but before I will consider refinishing valve covers you must inscribe your initials or inscribe some sort of ID on the inside.
I don't do carb intakes or the expansion tanks. I won't quote prices on here though. Thanks, John D

sub006

Can't you just order brand-new covers OTC at your dealer parts department?

John E. DeGregory

Glad you like your refinishing now. Sorry we could not do anything with the deep crater above the script. It's just too deep as the skin has separated. It seems that several alloys were used on our old Corvette aluminum VC's. At Fall Carlisle I was discussing this with Don Baker. The 56-57 valve covers do not seem to have the impurities in the alloy as the later ones do. The early ones come out a different color for us. They look like raw aluminum. The 59 to 67 valve covers come out a slightly differnt color with a tad more gray in them. They tend to peel easier than the 56-57 ones.
Now the later VC's say from a Camaro or a LT1 really come out nice as they are very thick and a decent alloy. Trouble is I think our casting refinishing process is a little dull for the LT1s although we do a ton of them and guys seem to be satisfied. I think they should be a little more shiny.
VC refinishing is a labor of love. As far as the buks go you can't get rich doing them. And if you miss a step look out as they look like crap. But I don't let them go without me inspecting each one and giving it my approval. If I don't like the job I say to my pal-why don't we try this POC one more time. I just do them to keep my helper(and best friend) in beer as he likes the stuff.(to say the least). Take care, JD

JohnZ

No, you can't - they were discontinued from Service decades ago. Paragon owns the original GM die-cast mold (with the crack through the "o") and runs parts from it, but they're pretty rough fresh out of the mold and need finishing to look decent.

The later Camaro Z/28 and LT-1 covers are available OTC, but they're highly-polished ('cuz that mold isn't in great shape either and polishing hides the defects), while the originals were satin-finished like the '56-'67 finned Corvette covers.

65coupe

I use semichrome polish in the past with decent results.