I don't know if this is the right place for this question but, I have the water pump off of the front of my engine and have totally. cleaned up the timing gear cover. My question is should I paint the whole front of this before I put the new water pump on or wait until after it is installed?

 

I recently had the water pump off of the 455 in my 71 98. I didn't paint the timing chain cover. I just cleaned it thoroughly. I did mask off the ports and the front of the impeller on the water pump and paint it.

 

The front cover and water pump were painted in place on the engine. I believe the harmonic balancer was also in place, so there wasn't a whole lot of paint on the cover. When I build motors, I paint the engine with the balancer off and mask the crank snout and seal.