Spray paint for "black textured finish" look?

That stuff looks great. I will find out about the Harley stuff today.

I did a little research today, and as far as the Harley stuff, the paint you would want is called Black Wrinkle Finish. There's a texture finish and a wrinkle finish. The texture finsih is rough kind of like a finer grit sand paper. The wrinkle looks more like what's in those pictures blakthorn posted. I had some laying around in my area and tried it out on a piece of metal. The can had been sitting for a while, and the nozzle was a little clogged so it went on like ****, but came out decent for what I had to work with. I didn't have a camera or anything to take pics. The thicker you spray it on, the heavier the wrinkle finish is. If you spray it on light it's basically just gloss black. It takes a long time to dry, and the finish shows up as it dries, it looks just black when you spray it on. It took probably a good 4 or 5 hours for the finish to start showing up well. I sprayed it on from probably 6-8 inches, I'm not sure what kind of affect it would have holding it closer or farther. You might want to experiment a little first. Like I said before, this paint is used on some engine parts on bikes, so it has no problem with heat. The downside is it's about $20 a can Hope this helps.

Damn....well lets see what pans out with the other stuff blakthorn posted and see if he can get a brand or something. I've used other wrinkle paints....the effect does happen as it dries so that's normal. The thing that i wonder about though is the "wrinkle" stuff i've used was just that...it gave a finish that looked like wrinkled clothes, not like a texture like those pics above. If i can find something to make the finish look like that black cam cover, i'm probably going to use it on a few things, not just the valve covers.

Anything, yet? I too am anxiously waiting to find out about the black crinkle paint used on that Dodge valve cover....

dont use those. They are junk. But Powdercoating would be the way to go. To get your covers done it would prolly be 60-80 dollars, if that.

Weeeeell......time to dig up an old thread and hopefully give some ideas. I found some paint that i think is exactly what i'm wanting (i think it's the same thing that Dodge valve cover up above has on it). It's Rustoleum Textured paint for metal, semi-gloss black and is about like 200 grit sand paper.

Check it out...this is my Merkur valve cover...i haven't sanded the "fins" yet but i'm doing that in a bit. It looks kinda glosses in the flash of the camera but it's really a semi-gloss black. Looks awesome in the sun:

(i left the pics big on purpose to show the texture)




It's gonna look badass when i get the tops sanded. This is my trial run with this paint...if it holds up nice and doesn't chip in 3 months, i'm gonna do my "POWERED BY FORD" stock '85 covers and maybe even my intake to match.

Vht and plasti kote both work great and do just fine with oil and heat when applied as instructed. I had it on my valve covers and intake for 5years and 227,000 miles.

Here's the finished product. I may still hit the tops again with some heavier grit so they look a bit more machined. I'm gonna leave it without clear coat so i can sand them down easily when they get dull and brighten them back up again.

Vedy nice. Black is cool in all variations...

Came out great.