Cooling issues with painted engine?

Does painting an air cooled engine (with engine paint of course) cause any issues with heat transfer and cooling of the engine while it's operating?

 

I have heard it both ways. Have heard it will cause overheating if the paint is too thick.

 

I have heard that black paint helps to dissipate heat.

In short, no it will not cause your motor to overheat. Lots of people on here have painted motors. Secas, Midnight Maxims, etc have black motors.

 

I have been having this very discussion over the last few weeks with a local race shop near my office. In short, black dissipates heat better, but look at the motors manufactured today, almost all are painted in silver or black. A lot of race motors are powdercoated, so that's the route I took. Picked up the head and cylinders this afternoon, and they did a fantastic job. Exhaust is going in tomorrow for ceramic coating and then I should be done.

 

Those look very slick Jamie, nice job!

 

Thanks, yeah these guys do a lot of race car frames and they do all my powdercoating. When I take my exhaust to be ceramic coated, I'm going to take a spare set of front and rear rims to have them powdercoated also. We'll see how those look.

 

Wow all of that is very pretty! I've heard the engine enamel is pretty tough and it doesn't take a thick coat to get good coverage. I think I will have to give it a shot whenever I can manage to get the engine cleaned up. Thanks!

 

While we are on the subject, anyone paint their casing with silver paint? What did you use? How was the result? Pics???

 

I was close to just going back with paint and then I decided at the last moment to powdercoat. One thought was to paint it like the Midnight Specials but to paint it all black and then sand the edges of the fins and then clear coat. The black and then the silver outside of the fins looks really sharp and the black dissipates the heat better than the silver/chrome from what I hear.

If you do paint, just make sure you use high temp and you're good to go. I would love to polish an entire motor, but mine get to dirty, that was another reason I went with the powdercoat. Low mainenance to keep clean and no rust.

 

That's what I'm planning on. Satin black engine with stainless hardware and filed fins. Should look really sharp!

 

I used high temp BBQ paint on mine (flat black) which turned out very well and held up good for the past few years now. Then sand and polish the edge of the fins looks pretty cool too. It won't match the powder coat very well, but looks good just the same.