Painted metallic blue engine cover

Pic 1: Painted RB25DET NEO engine cover

The engine bay kind of look a bit on the plain side of things and it struck me that I have to do something to spruce it up a bit. I explored 2 options:-

1) Paint the engine cover
2) Paint the engine block cover (and ditch the engine cover!!)

Exploring around I found someone in Japan selling painted RB25DET engine block cover in custom blue colour with thick metallic flakes. The paint is one of a kind as it's from the House of Kolor. Interesting indeed but I reckon I'll have to remove the TCS and do a custom plenum (ala RB26DETT) for it to look really good.

In the end I decided to go with the cheaper option of just painting the engine cover. Afraid that I'll mess up mine, I got a spare set in from Japan. All in it's not too cheap to courier the engine cover in. :(

Pic 2: Here comes the RB25DET NEO engine cover

Pic 3: Thankfully it's nicely bubble wrapped

Once I got the engine cover in, I sent it to my painters with my idea of colouring it blue with white accents. Why blue? Well it matches the same blue on my brake callipers. :P

It was stashed in my painters place for a couple of weeks as I was not in a hurry and he's doing it in his spare time. Initially I would have thought that the whole engine cover would have been painted in blue; and then white accents and letterings would have been painted in via masking off the edges around it. Boy, was I wrong.....

Instead, the whole engine cover was painted in white first. Then, the coat of blue was laid on. The white accents were then revealed upon removal of the blue paint on top of it. Lest to say, it's one hell of a time consuming and difficult job to do.

The end results were amazingly beautiful. Here are the pics of the finished product.

So what do you think?

Pic 4: RB25DET NEO engine cover in its original state

Pic 5: Painted in white

Pic 6: How it looks when it is done

Pic 7: Comparing a before and after side by side