these all look good right after they're painted, but how do they hold up? The only guy I know personally to have done this is unhappy with the long-term results. I'm not sure what paint he used though (I think just reg spray paint).

 

The cover is made of fiber-reinforced ABS. ABS doesn't take phenominally well to just being rattle canned. If you don't prep the surface very well (Prep Sol, mineral spirits, etc), and use an adhesion promoter prior to painting, the colorcoat is gonna turn to crap in fairly short order.

This is the VC from my R.I.P. Honda, just over 1 year after I painted it, using the same method I did for the cover in my tC:

 

heres mine

 

FrankenScion (Jon)'s is painted really bad ___! its not a TC, but its pimp!

 

ummm.. this is kinda off topic, but i want to know for sure if you can just take out the cover and leave it??

 

^ thats wat i wanna kno, isnt it bad to do that???

 

Purely cosmetic.

 

This is mine. I was going for the JDM honda wrinkle red.

 

look at this thread. my screen name on Scion-tech is Jdangle:http://scion-tech.com/zerothread?id=42&page=2. its the valve cover i polished. and the the thread author, PM sent