If its an ST200 one is it not already smooth ?
But the existing black powdercoat, which is likely to be flaking off in places will need to be stripped first.
I paid about £120 for mine but I paid extra because I wanted a specific colour (Imperial Blue) and rainbow matalflake.
You only get a limited choice of colours for powdercoating - candy apple red shouldn't be a problem though.
The price for mine included blasting off the original black powdercoat, new powdercoat in light grey (as an undercoat), two pack paint in Ford Imperial Blue which they purchased from Ford and then lacquered with the metal flake. Then several coats of more lacquer to smooth the bumps created by the metalflake. It was baked after the powdercoat and then baked again after the final lacquer.
But before all of that I cleaned as much of the oil and carbon deposits as I could inside with degreaser, carb cleaner and deisel. I gave it an overnight soaking before I got to work using some long bottle brushes for the parts you can't reach and scotchbrite pads for the parts you can reach. You'll almost certainly damage the fresh paint finish if you did this afterwards.
Then it was flushed out with gallons of water and a scrub with some new bottle brushes until the water ran clear.
All the gasket surfaces were cleaned up too.
Then all the gasket surfaces and their holes were masked up using aluminium tape as normal masking tape would not survive the media blasting. The two vacuum hose holes were blocked up with old cut off vacuum tubes with the open ends sealed up with the same tape.
You need to make sure the masking is strong and fully sealed because, as previously mentioned, any contamination inside will get sucked into your engine and kill it - really quickly too!
If in doubt, double mask, overlapping the previous layers overlaps.
That was a full day's work to complete.
Then it was sent off to be blasted and painted.
I would ask them to return it to you still masked up so you can see for yourself if your masking survived the blasting process. Then you'll know if any unwanted media/sand/powedercoat has managed to get inside. This does give you a bit more work as you have to be very careful when you peel it all off, not to damage the paint/powdercoat at the edges of the masking. A few sharp stanley blades will be needed to cut the masked edges before you peel off.
Then you just need to clean all the gasket surfaces of all the goo left from the masking.
I also purchased new brass collars/O-rings from Ford for the two vacuum hose fittings (see the FINIS codes thread for what to order). The old ones needed some care to remove - again using a sharp stanley blade to cut the overspray at the top of the collars so they could be pushed out from the inside via the throttle body opening, using a scredriver as a chisel and hammering it out.
Protect the newly painted side with a thick blanket or similar.
If you dont want to replace the brass collars, you'll most likely need to replace the O-rings, just make sure they are specced to withstand high temperatures. Those vacuum hoses need a good seal.
And finally, the UIM was flushed inside, and flushed and flushed again with many of gallons of water. I used Tony's shower.
Leave it to fully dry (beer time :beer
and then it's ready for fitting.
I think I've just written a 'How to'.
