VW Custom Manifold / Restoration

This weeks video is a project ive been asked to do by a good buddy of mine who is building a completely custom T25 Vw Camper and one of the things he wanted customized was his intake manifold while the engine is out being rebuilt, I will be doing the rocker cover in a similar style but i wont show that as ive already done a rocker cover and i wouldn't want to repeat videos.

First thing i done was to break out the tool kit crack the cap screws holding on the egr and intake connector they broke free waaay easier than i anticipated, ive had to heat EGR valves with blow torches in the past just to get them off but this one was ok. The internals of the manifold and egr were absolutely caked with unburnt diesel,oil and carbon!

To remove all of the carbon build up it was taken to the parts washer and given a extremely thorough soaking and scrubbing session and im pleased to say that 99% of all the deposits were removed so that a bonus and should help the finished engine build breathe a lot easier.

Once dried off i set about with the more serious task of prepping the manifold for its custom paint job the first job on that list was to attack the horrible casting marks with the angle grinder and a flap disc, once that was done all the hard to reach bits were done with a sanding drum on the Dremel.

Once suitably smooth and after George had been fed, the manifold was first etch primed then given a few coats of high build primer to raise the surface so that i could sand back to a perfectly smooth surface that was suitable for accepting my custom mixed base coat.

I applied a pure gold tinter as a base layer of colour for the stencil i would apply, while the gold was drying a i created the vintage VW logo and cut it out in vinyl using my plotter then applied it to the manifold where i thought it looked the best. Then came My own blend of purple, This colour is unique to me and i dont have a code only the formulation for the colour. Once several layers of the metallic purple were applied and dried i removed the stencil to expose the beautiful gold underneath. This was the sealed in with 5 coats of high gloss high durability lacquer/ clear.

While the clear was curing i set my sights on making the EGR and mounting hardware look better then new so off to the blaster with them it was, once blasted the surfaces were then polished up in the good old sketchy bench grinder ( a polished surface plates better than a dull one). The parts were then dipped in all the solutions required to perform the plating and then at the last step they were left in the yellow passivate for much longer than recommended so that i could achieve the dirty gold/bronze effect i was after and im glad to say it turned out fantastic!

Once all of those steps were completed the rebuild was just the reverse of the disassembly.

I hope you enjoyed this little project as much as i did. See you all soon in the next video.

If you like what you see and have any ideas for the channel or would even like to donate something to restore to the channel please get in touch. :)

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VW Custom Manifold / Restoration