Hold onto your hats people... Two posts this month!!!
Now I don't know if any of you have seen Tropic Thunder even if you haven't you may well be aware of the Robert Downy Jnr quote where he says that you should "Never go full retarded" Well Robert; I care not for your opinion.
So in line with my 'keep it looking stock even though it isn't' theme I present to you my latest effort...
It's a Pavtek billet mechanical fuel pump. Basically they get the base from a Holley Ultra HP mechanical fuel pump and make a billet top for it so that it can be bolted up to a cleveland block (Holley no longer make one for a cleveland themselves you see)
Its an awesome looking piece, a nice billet top and a chrome base. Unfortunately it looks nothing like the old stock Carter fuel pumps.
So I pulled it apart (well as much as I could) then I taped the top of it up. Then I filed, ground and dremeled all of the machining marks out of the billet housing. I even removed the PAVTEK in the top. Then I sandblasted the sucker so that it looked like a cast piece.
I really wanted to get the base gold zinc plated to replicate the finish of the Carter fuel pumps but due to the fact that it was die cast and has the one way valves knurled in place it meant that plating wasn't an option. Undeterred
I got the oldest garnet I had and played with pressure settings until i was able to sandblast an aluminum can without damaging it. Using these settings I keyed the surface of the base ready for paint.
Now my Mum has been painting fine china for over 50 years so she has a bit of an eye for colour. So the next time she was visiting I explained what I wanted to replicate gold zinc with spray cans. She gave me that look that says I can't believe I gave birth to this and then I dragged her to the local auto shop where we bought a bunch of high temperature spray cans.
Next we did about 20 test sprays. I could bore you with the details about our tests where we painted some using a primer v's not. Or about how we experimented with different colours over and under the anodizing effect base or how we experimented with dusting the reds, greens, golds and silvers over the silver/gold base or even how we tried different clear coats but I won't (I guess I just did to a degree
)
In the end I got something that I am happy with. No it's not a gold zinc finish but it's the best I could do. Unfortunately the full effect seems to be a bit lost in a photo but here it is.
A stock pump
The Pavtek one
After painting
Reassembled. Unfortunately the pictures really show up the red and bury the green.
