Painted bolt prep?

[gzig5]

I'm a long way from paint, but I'm trying to be as thorough as I can so I don't have to redo everything.  What do you do to the bolts that will get painted and show?  For instance the door hinge and fender bolts?  I've wire brushed and EvapoRust treated them to get them reasonably clean and any original surface treatment is long gone.  I need to hang the doors and fenders in order to align the new quarters.  Do I just shoot the heads with some primer and/or paint to protect them?  Leave them raw?  It's going to be quite a while before it gets final paint. 

[RUNCHARGER]

Dust some cheap spray paint primer on the threads and bottoms. I epoxy prime and final paint the heads later when I paint the exterior usually.

[anlauto]

Once I get them clean, I just spray with with a primer so they won't rust...install them as needed, when it comes time for final paint the body shop usually primes and paints them along with the body.

[Burdar]

Another option is to just replace them.  New bolts can be purchased that have the same head markings and washer diameters.  They will come zinc plated so there is already good corrosion protection there.

[tparker]

I painted my car a little over a year ago or so. I had a lot of the car disassembled and painted the bolts off the car. The fender bolts in particular. They looked great, I was happy.  then I put the fenders on and the paint cracked and chipped etc.  The paint did not hold up at all. I wrenched on a lot of original bolts and I don't ever recall the paint being so brittle. Different paint.

I don't like the look of bolts painted in place. It may have been done at the factory that way, but I don't recall my the paint covering both the bolt and fenders. Not sure what I am going to do at this point. Maybe go with black bolts over the yellow body. That may not be a great look. Or I can touch them up with a detail gun.

[Mopar5]

Its  tedious to sand between coats on bolts so for parts like that I use the wet on wet method.After the part is clean and prepped I primer the part and let the primer flash then go directly to paint in an hour or less. There are some epoxys will let you have a 24 hour recoat window before you have to sand the part again before paint.I think its better that way to avoid adhesion problems. So if you plan on painting the bolts on the car I would just do nothing now and paint them then all in one step.