Neo Valve Cover Refresh

I've always been a fan of the red wrinkle look for valve covers. Kam Kaldwell was nice enough to spray the One-Via cover for me and I've been wanting to do the Skyline's cover to match. I've never used the VHT Wrinkle paint before, but with the R32 down for a few repairs/modifications I figured now was the best time to do it. I couldn't find anyone who stock VHT in red, but I was able to order a couple of cans at O'Reilly Auto Parts for $8.90 versus the $19 I was seeing on Amazon.

I've seen some people just do the actual valve covers on the RB25, but I think it looks much better when the cam pulley cover matches as well. I ended up using aircraft remover to get the valve covers down to bare metal. After I had all the paint removed I doused the valves covers in brake cleaner and lit them on fire. It helped get rid of any remaining gunk and warmed them up nicely for spraying. After a good wipe down with Acetone I sprayed a few coats of high-temp primer and let it all sit for a couple hours.

I followed the directions on the VHT can to the letter, which I definitely won't next time. It called for three very heavy coats sprayed in 3 different directions. The end result was pretty good, but it came out "too" wrinkled for my liking. 

Everything is still wet in the picture above, but you can see the wrinkles are pretty big. I ended up testing on another piece and found that lighter coats ended up with smaller wrinkles, which definitely looks better. 

I'm definitely happy with the results and it makes the engine room look much better. I was going to do the plug cover as well to match, but I couldn't figure out where I put the damn thing. I'm almost tempted to get the carbon cover off of eBay so it matches the intake pipe.