Refreshened air

The air cleaner on a 280z stands out when the hood is opened.  Unfortunately, mine was looking a little worse for wear.  I decided to freshen it up a bit.

The color on the air cleaner was a proprietary color that was used by the supplier of the part.  The carbon canister bracket also uses this color.  Unfortunately the color is not easy to come by.  There are some people selling specially mixed cans of paint for Datsuns, but at $30 per can I thought I could find a more practical solution.  After some research, I found that the Pontiac Blue engine enamel from Dupli-Color was a close match.

I began by stripping the paint and rust.  While I had never used wire wheels before, I've found them invaluable in my recent work.  Not only do they strip paint and rust very quickly, they can also remove skin just as fast!

After about an hour of working with the wire brushes on a drill, I had the upper and lower housings stripped and ready for painting.

According to the instructions on the can I had an hour from the first spray to apply three coats of primer and three coats of color.  This gave ten minutes per coat and I had to spray both top and bottom.  I ended spraying in five minute intervals, alternating sides of each part to give ten minutes between coats.  

While the end color was not a perfect match to the original color, I actually like the new color as it is a little deeper.  I'll reinstall the unit once I complete some other work in that area of the car.