- Hi this is Davin, with Hagerty in our DIY series.
So I've always run into this issue
with how do I coat the head of a bolt?
So something I have located is some
exhaust manifold dressing.
It works fantastic on exhaust manifolds
and I got thinking that that coating's actually
pretty solid and tight.
It doesn't seem to chip at all when I mess around
with the exhaust manifold.
Geez, what would it do on bolts?
So the scary part is when you first spray it on,
its gold, and it's like oh boy,
I was looking for something darker than gold.
But once you heat this and it hits 600 degrees
it turns to a, really a cast iron color,
obviously since it's for exhaust manifolds, color wise.
So if you can live with this darker gray color,
it's not black, but it's got kind of a cool look to it.
And I've also found that it doesn't,
it seems to be pretty chip resistant
relative to putting a wrench on it.
So that's what I'm gonna do with these parts.
As you can see, these are pretty rusty and nasty
but the main function of the bolt
is in good tact threads wise.
So I can reuse these, it's just the head that's ugly.
I'm gonna sandblast 'em, spray some of this on there.
It's gonna turn gold and look funny
and then we're gonna heat it with the inductive heater
and it's gonna turn to this nice gray color.
And it's gonna look all right on the engine.
All right, so with all that said,
let's head on over to the sandblaster
and get these parts cleaned up.
(upbeat music)
(air blowing)
All right, so at this point these are nice and clean.
Now I'm gonna take and put them on
a piece of cardboard, hold them up.
Give me a spot to paint them on.
Hoping that would stay there.
And like painting any surface,
now the sandblaster of course
took all the grease and the paint
and all that type of stuff, anything that's oily off.
But of course you have a little dust on there.
So like any painted surface you want it
free of oil and free of dust.
Now at this point I'm just gonna use
a little compressed air to blow
(air blowing)
any dust off them.
All right, so now here's a little slow mo action for you.
(upbeat music)
Like any paint, you gotta give it some time to dry,
70 degrees and probably 15 20 minutes.
It cures pretty quickly.
And then we'll take and use our inductive heater
to turn it to that dark gray color.
But in the meantime, I need to organize some tools
and have a cup of coffee.
Literally.
Okay the pants dry to the touch
so we're ready to heat them up and turn them
to that dark gray color.
All right so you can see I'm doing this on cardboard.
It's gonna smoke probably a little bit.
As long as it doesn't get carried away,
we won't have any issues.
And I'm just gonna heat these up
real nice and slowly, kinda move that up and down.
And wham, look at that, look how it changes
real quick like that.
That's cool.
Okay, I went through, did all the bolts, they all look nice,
they're all pretty even and I didn't change the metallurgy.
I know there's somebody out there thinking,
oh man, your heating those bolts up,
and they're no good anymore.
I didn't get them any warmer than what they'll be
in the engine so pretty sure I didn't change
the metallurgy at that point.
One thing to note, again, I am on cardboard.
It did not burst into flames.
It did get a little smoke when I was doing about
eight of them at a time.
And it was just basically where the bolt is real close,
it's hot, and it just kinda singed
the cardboard just a little bit.
So I had a little bit of smoke coming up through here.
I'm in a well ventilated area
and I have a bucket of water right behind the camera guy.
So if this got so hot, it was going in there
and problem solved.
So that's one way to coat some bolt heads
that's not going to chip when you install them.
They should take the temperature.
The paint will take the temperature
that it's gonna see on the engine
and they're gonna look good for quite some time.
(upbeat music)