Engine bay de-rusting and painting

depends on the colour & what paint you decide to use?

if its a basic colour like red / blue / white / black or silver then you can use something like Hammerite smooth that can be used as a one-coat without primer or laquer, if the car has a 'posh' paintjob then maybe laquer if a strong metalic basecoat is used?

as to rust 'killer' or 'converter' treatments then thats a whole new topic of discussion - depending on access then maybe sand-blast small areas where hand-sanding is not easily accessable? (theres cheap self-contained sandblast 'guns' available that work wonders for this if you have a compressor)

I'm lucky with my Eunos as the silver paintwork is better underbonnet than on the outside
Rich.

I've used white hammerite smooth on the underbonnet of a good few rallycars (both mine & those I've built for other people), it's very hard wearing & can handle a bit of abuse (think heat from exhaust manifolds, although the white does yellow after a while but easily touched-up)

as to not needing to look stupidly nice" thats actually easy to do, most modern paints are self-leveling so few brush-strokes BUT you might have runns (paint not schyte )

paint is easy, running pipes & wires neatly is the art

Rich.

Ughhhh but it gets very dirty!