Painting a Radiator

alexkyriak

alexkyriak

alexkyriak

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London, UK
Can't recall if I asked this within another post or not, but, has anyone painted their radiator?

I want to paint the body of a radiator from black to white - I do not want to paint the fins. Has anyone done this and reported any adverse issues? There are a couple of vids online, but can't see a conclusive answer on effect of temps from painting the radiator body itself.

In terms of paint, after a light scuff with some fine sandpaper, from what I have read a rustoleum all-purpose spray paint is recommended. Does anyone else have experience in this with any advice?

Much appreciated in advance guys :)
 
Ours are 50 years old and probably have about 6 coats of gloss at least and seem to work perfectly fine, if that helps at all :p
 
Yeah I pained one white a good few years ago, I cut cardboard to cover the fins inside then just rattle can for the white coat. I think I did use a rustoleum although it might have just been the first white I grabbed in Halfords lol.

Still worked every bit as well as it did before.
 
As long as you don't paint the fins, should be fine.
The painting, if any, used on fins are designed to allow the surface to do its thing. A general purpose paint may, at some extent, trap the heat at some level.
The body of the radiator gets warmer under load, but it isn't really responsible for heat dissipation. That is the fins job. The body works as mounting, protection and enclosure of the fin area.
Some radiators allow for the whole casing to be removed (EK XE, if I remember correctly, and others I'm sure), but if not, fold some few A4 paper and slot them in between the fins and the casing. Also use some port plugs (which are supplied with new radiators) or find a way to seal completelly the port (inlets). If paint gets in, when screwing the fittings, it will likely come lose and end up in your waterblocks fins or floating on the reservoir (like some dust for ZMT tubbing).
For spray painting, if you're not sure which paint to use, got some on the Rainforest for cars and the finishing was fantastic. Very uniform coating, and was under a fiver per can. Sprayed an old Enthoo Primo and was as good as new.
 
I've recently painted 2 Corsair XR7 360mm rads from black to white with no ill effects

Only thing I would recommend is before painting your rads do a test paint on something else and check the colour is what you want as although I used a white paint (think rustoleum) and it looked great during painting as soon as they were done and I went to put them in my pc you could see it's a bit of a creamy colour and not the white I wanted. Still useable but in hindsight...
 
That's the issue with white paint. Must will be a touch cream.
May not be the cheapest solution, but buying compatible car paint must be easier to achieve a true white, such as Arctic White, Polar White, etc.
 
I’ve gone a bit mad on this and also want to disassemble the fan assembly to paint the black plastic fan ring white… but this way madness lies.
 
No need to disassemble the fan if you only want to do the frame. Just mask off the blades, wee bit of blue tack slightly between the hub and the frame to stop it spinning and gently spray away. Or use vinyl dye so it recolours the plastic rather than coats it. And if you do end up doing the blades too, the vinyl dye is a must as using paint to coat the plastic can introduce imbalance.

As for the radiators, if you really wan to do a nice job then sand the body down first to remove the existing paint.
 
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