S30 Painting Your Engine

More than likely your Datsun L series motor has seen it's share of abuse with paint, Grease, mud, oil, and you can't tell what the paint was suppose to look like as you are restoring your Z. Well here is some options to restore your engines paint back to the stock color.

Items Needed

  • Engine hoist
  • Engine Stand
  • Various Hand tools
  • Plastic Baggies
  • Masking tape
  • News Paper/Painters Paper
  • Spray Gun and compressor
  • Dupont Acrylic Enamel paint system

The First thing to do is to get the motor pulled out of the chassis. Follow the FSM to remove the Engine in Section ER-Engine Removal and Installation. The items you want to paint are the Block, Oil Pan, Timing Cover. The head is natural Aluminum from the factory and does not need to be painted.

Once the Engine Is Removed and placed on the Engine Stand Tear the motor down to the most basic parts such as the Block, Oil pan, and timing cover.

Now you can start to clean the parts of any dirt and Grease otherwise your paint will not stick to the block. you can use combination of de-greaser, pressure washing, wire brushes, Aircraft stripper(acid) to clean and prepare the block and parts for painting.

With the Enging ready for paint mask off areas that should not be painted. If it is not covered with paint now It will be if you don't mask it.

The Paint Mix

You now are wondering about what paint to use to get that stock color, Well there is no off the shelf paint that will match up to the stock Datsun color. Unlike the Domestic Ford/Chevy/Dodge where manufactures are making spray cans to match factory colors, you have to have your paint mixed at a paint supplier. We used the Dupont Acrylic Enamel system with the base color being #BS053A. Below is the mixing information to achieve the stock color.

BS053A H ALT:2 CENTARI
Mix Size: Quart
Tint Number
Amount
758S DRIER
47.8
728A BLUE
182.3
742A BLUE GREEN
348.7
700A WHITE
525.7
705A BLACK
909.6

Note that the BS053A is just a baseline color that is modified per the #s listed. BS053A is NOT the finished color, but is used as a starting point.

Air Cleaner Paint

For the air cleaner, Datsun used two colors depending on the Year. Early Carbed cars have a red/orange air filter assembly and Dupli-color De 1620 Chevrolet Orange is a close match but to be perfect you can use the following Sherwin Williams formula.


35-900106 70562(G)
Acrylyd Acrylic Enamel
Size 1.00 Quart
U7124 Orange
440.4
U7127 N Titanate
199.4
U7107 O Yellow
61.1
U7118 Black
5.6
U7110 S White
0.9
V2V269 Clear
208.0
V6V175 Mix Drier
33.1


Later Fuel injected cars used a paint close to the color of the Engine paint but it is a little Lighter. You can use Duplicolor Engine Enamel Ponitac Blue DE1610 for a close match as well.

Decals

Once your air cleaner is painted and like new it's time to install new decals.

These Decals can be purchased from either the Zstore or from Banzai Motorworks.

Reassembly

Reassembly is the reverse of removal. Just be careful not to scratch that new paint.

Sources used on this page:

  • Paint mix guide for air Cleaner from: http://www.classiczcars.com
  • Engine Paint Mix Guide from http://www.Zhome.com