Is there a way to blacken & polish the engine ON the bike?

This is probably a stupid question but here goes

Whenever I've read about someone repainting the engine and polishing the cooling fins, it's always while the engine is already torn-down.

If the bike is fully assembled and I were to spend a couple hours with toothbrush, solvents etc.. to get the block really clean in all the nooks & crannies, is there a kind of black engine paint that could be brushed-into all the grooves with a fine artists paintbrush?

Next: if the above is possible, once it's dry, then couldn't one carefully sand & buff all the cooling fins and end-up with a decent job?

If that's a stupid duct-tape approach, let me know. If it is possible, hell, I would love to do that this weekend.

RSVP - thanks

 

I haven't taken my motor out yet but I plan to this weekend. It seems pretty easy based on my manual and would probably get better results if you just took the motor out. There's a bunch of stuff in the way to get to all the fins with it in the bike. By the time you undo all that there isn't much more needed to get the motor out.

 

i cant see why you cant pull the tank mask off the whole bike and paint it, then just sand the fins later. no reason to pull the motor, im polishing mine without removing a single bolt

 

I re-sprayed the sides (and most of the front) of my cylinders and ground the fins, without removing the engine:

 

wow that is one good looking bike Fitz

 

Thanks. It started out a whole lot grungier than your Seca, took a lot more work than I originally anticipated to reverse the deterioration from sitting. It's got less than 10K miles on it.

 

Re: Is there a way to blacken & polish the engine ON the bik

Mine was pretty much the same - dirt accumilated in all the nooks a cranies over time. When I finished with the major work on my transformation, I decided the engine needed to look better. SOmeof the covers, I sanded and polished to dress them up. The remainder of the enigne,I brush painted flat black BBQ paint on it. It looks good and the paint lasted well (3 years now) without any chips or peels. Brushing it on is easy if your good with a brush. You will need a small 1/2" Brush to do it right.
This is mine.