You can’t be serious about painting your automatic transmission. First off, it’s aluminum for several reasons . Pretty isn’t one of them. Keeping it cool is one of the most important thing, along with proper fluid level. Aluminum dissipates the heat where painting it will hold heat in. Not good. There are several aluminum wheel cleaners that will give you a much better look while keeping it natural.
I already tried the aluminum cleaners that all claim to make aluminum look new... none of them did. My latest attempt was with a product called Aluminum Brightener. It resulted in the transmission looking like what I showed in the picture taken today. Anything but bright.
I have an aluminum polishing kit on the way... if that doesn't work then I'll definitely paint the case silver. I've watched literally hundreds of videos on transmission rebuilds and many of them paint the case with silver paint... but I'll admit, many don't.
Maybe silver paint has better heat dissipation qualities than paints with color. Who knows? Or maybe a few thousandths of an inch layer of silver paint dissipates heat better than a crud layer comprised of oil, tranny fluid, road tar, clay and good old sludge... very similar to what I've already removed from the case. Yeah... that's the ticket.
It will probably never come to that as I can't see aluminum polishing not bringing a nice aluminum luster to the case... at least making it more in line with the look I'm after.
And yes... pretty does matter (to me).
