I'm planning on powder coating my 70 dual snorkel air cleaner. Will the temperature used to bake the paint damage any of the parts in the pods that control the flaps inside the snorkels? Or any temperature switch thing on the bottom of the air cleaner? Thanks guys! Mark

Supposedly they bake power coated parts at 400 degrees so I imagine that will wreck anything made of plastic.

For what its worth, I had my dual snorkel air cleaner powdercoated wrinkle black. It came out great and the pods still work.

Not sure what is in them. In that they were made for an "under hood engine environment" its likely the diaphragms are able to take some heat, but I can't say for sure since I've never had one in my hand. They're going to see between 350F-400F to cure the powder coating so in "most" cases standard plastic parts will not survive.

Any reason you are committed to powder coating? I used regular wrinkle paint (Eastwood I think) on my 70 dual snorkel and it turned out great. 10 years later it still looks brand new.

An air cleaner generally doesn't get much wear and tear. Why take the risk of baking the powder at high temp when you don't need to?

Wrinkle powder coatings generally require more heat for curing than other powder finishes. It has to do with the chemical reactions required to create the wrinkle look and they like a shock of high heat in order to get things going.

So you're air cleaner will see heat in the 400 degree range for up to 20-25 minutes.

Because of this I've tried to steer customers away from powder coating any assembly with dampers, diaphrams, etc. unless the parts can be removed. If the parts don't melt they may end up very brittle and fail quickly once in use.

Hey everyone, thanks for the advice and insight. Exactly what I needed to hear. I'm thinking of trying to remove the pods and see if I can get the insides out then powder coat. It doesn't look that easy. Anyone tried to do that before?

I'm thinking the same thing

My 2 cent worth, I have seen a few breathers like that and don't remember the{pods} being wrinkle,just a semi gloss black!

Yep, I don't think any of the dual snorkel (or single snorkel for that matter) air cleaners were wrinkled. The OP didn't actually mention a wrinkle finish.

http://www.nicksgarage.com/aircleaner.htm

He mentioned 1970. In 1970 the dual snorkel big block non-air grabber were wrinkle black. Other years varied.

I stand corrected. That's a pretty cool link.

well what is the conscious on the {pods} wrinkle or not??

Just like the engine, the factory painted the air cleaners all at once after they were assembled. So the pods got the same paint as the rest of the air cleaner.

The pods were held on with little bent metal tabs--put on before paint.
If they would have tried to assemble them after paint, the paint would have all flaked off and would have been much harder to assemble that way.

Don't believe me check out the later 73 air cleaner that was orange. Pods were also orange--painted all at once.