Any tips for detailing an Engine bay?

I recently did the same thing, let me suggest you NOT use a sandblaster. I spent more time getting sand out of my car than I did blasting the paint off of it. Using the sandblaster reduced the total time of turning the metal silver by at least 50% versus a wire wheel but sand was EVERYWHERE!

Go find some "Aircraft stripper", buy 8-10 cans of it and use liberally. Use it in a well ventilated area, don't get it on you or breath it in. This stuff disolves paint like crazy, I am amazed that the EPA has not banned it.

Remove EVERYTHING you can. All brake lines, motor mounts, steering box, even the suspension if you can. The less stuff in there the easier it is to get everything taken down to bare metal. Once you have it all silver use a dozen bottles of alcohol to get all grease and oil and stripper out of there. Finish it off with a paint-prep degreaser. Apply many thin coats of primer, as close to the final color as possible. Then apply many thin coats of paint.

Take your time, it will take a long time to do it right.

If you dont want to remove your lines, heater core, MC, etc...wrap them in tin foil. This is easy to use. When you want to paint the engine bay, I suggest rustoleum satin black mixed with some paint thinner...mixed to the point where it drips steady off of the paint stirrer. Put it in a spray gun and off you go. It looks really good.

sandblasting sucks for the engine bay. I did it but the hassle of clean up and prep negated the speed of stripping.

i completly stripped the engine bay and duct taped over all of the holes, then covered the tranny and went at it.

but sand still was able to make it into the interior, probably through the cowl.

a wire brush on a drill after using paint stripper would be the best.

I'm almost in the same boat. Just curious what the advantage is to removing all of the paint. Couldn't I just degrease it, rough it up with some sanding and spray?

A gallon of aircraft stripper( God bless the guy that invented that stuff) will be plenty. Used a Bondo scraper & rags to get stuff out of the cracks. Also used a braided wire brush on a drill extension to get into some of the tough areas. Have a wet rag or something close by because you will get the stripper on you and you want this kind off fast!

yes, sand or bead blasting is a god-send, especially on the smaller items. if you are going to the hood hinges, make sure you spend a good amount of time afterwards with carb or brake cleaner and compressd air to make sure you get all the sand out of all the nooks and crannies, and when you do the control arms you MUST disassemble them so you don't get any sand in the bushings (especially the upper shaft bushings) and the ball joints. your best bet for those kind of parts is a blast cabinet, you can usually get the smaller ones at harbor freight for less than 100 bucks, mine was on sale for $65.00. if you are going to be doing bigger stuff like body panels, engine compartment dash panel, etc get one of the pressurized hopper type units, they work the best.

edit for spelling

i would highly recommend a better compressor, i have a 5.5hp 26gal devilbiss compressor and it runs out of steam pretty regularly when i'm blasting parts, but it usually catches up pretty quickly, so i'd say it is adequate but just barely. if you can afford it i would look into at least a 6hp 30-35 gal upright compressor, mine is a horizontal. you might be able to get by if you piggyback both of your current units together. usually the pancake style will recover very quickly so you might just get by using both of them together