Having just resprayed the wagons engine bay earlier in the year, I felt quite confident in a good result for the Civic's. I'll be using spray cans and my compressor is too small to be doing it from a gun.

Most of this post will be just photos, I'll title each batch with whats being done.

What I'll be using:

• 400, 600, 800 grit wet sand paper
• 3M abrasive discs (mainly for the bog on the strut towers)
• 1K Etch Primer
• Colour matched paint (I think it's 1K)
• 2K Clear

What we're working with

Everything pretty much stripped out except the 2 hard brake lines, 3 hard fuel lines, crowl and the 2 ID tags. I do remove all of these before proceeding with painting.

In the 2nd & 3rd images below, you can see the cracked bog on the top point of the strut tower. Usually theres some holes, and this is what I bogged when doing the motorswap respray as I've mentioned.

Primer & paint

The goods!

Sanding / grinding

A lot of sanding with the wet, I do like using the wet as I feel it's nice to get a good smooth feeling of the surface. Few tight spots were missed down behind the strut towers, if not missed then they might not have been sanded as much as other areas. A mixture of hard to get to/forgetting where to go back to.

Primer

Always a great feeling seeing the primer laid down!

As I was finishing up the priming, a spider appeared on top of the passenger side engine mount. After removing him and his web he laid from the radiator support I continued.

Colour

The first can started off a splattery as you can see below, I've never had this issue before. I swapped out the nozzel which seemed to fix the issue!

Now we're talking! The white looks so fresh! Going to be scared to drive it now, time for it to be a show car?

2K Clear coat

The good stuff..

Boy I love it once the 2K clear is done! Gives such a nice shine to the paint and a smooth surface feel. I like to lay the clear on thick, so this show make cleaning it easier in the future.

T bracket piece:

Just like with my wagon, I forgot about the T bracket, but atleast I still had paint left! Quickly whacked this out on the side. Maybe not the best sanding job but oh well, the 2K can had been opened and you can let it sit around for too long (it has a pull trigger mechanism on the bottom of the can to mix the agents inside).

With the T bar on after it's painted!

Also cleaned up this T bracket latch as we were here

Black stuff

Few bits to touch up with the black paint I'll be using for the inner arches.

The OEM styled black front radiator half.

As I'll be painting the inner guards, with everything else looking fresh in the engine bay I thought it'll be good to do the underneath side that comes up to the firewall, as it'll be visible past the rear subframe. I didn't want to mask up the bay, so I sprayed the paint into the cap of the can, then brushed it on. This actually worked really well, as you can see!

Snazzy

Finished product

I'm really happy with the finished product, looks very neat and fresh, the black bits complementing the white. It's going to look even better once the motor is back inside! Going to have to be careful reassembling everything now haha.

Misc bits

The various clips that cover up holes in the bay I originally sprayed over on the first respray forever ago, so I used paint thinners to remove the white. Also painted the black piece that sits on the bulk head around the middle wiper.

Even more goodness with these bits refitted

The crowl & AC delete plug were looking quite worn, so I used Mr Bowdens trim restore application to bring some blackness back to the pieces. I've used this on my daily and it's lasted for atleast 2yrs. You first clean the surface with the provided spray, then apply the black application with a foam brush, then wipe off the excess after a while. It'll sink into the material and restore the original colour itself.