IM in the process of customizing my 68 el camino. I plan on painting the transmission and motor the same as the body. Any suggestions on the procedures to do this. IM mostly wondering about preparation and adhesion problems. I dont want to spray can it and I will be driving this car. I want the paint to look good for some time. Please help.

EPOXY primer and urethane singlestage paint works the best IMO, just make absolutely sure that all surfaces are very clean. Engines usually have oil, silicones, etc. so the cleaning is the most important part.

As baddbob71 stated, the surface needs to be clean. No oil, wax, grease, silicone, flaking paint, etc. If you are cleaning it yourself spend time in some of the pockets where garbage can collect and bake into the surface.
You may also want to spend some time with the die grinder with a burr bit, sanding disc's, etc to remove casting flash or to blend something together. If you want the smooth look, buy some cylinder head porting kits to remove the rough casting so that a primer can then be applied and then sanded down smooth just like doing body work. If you slick it down it will reflect just like a good finish on a car body
I have seen better looking and more detailed motors to where the person also took the time to trim the gaskets down so they don't hang out like a sore thumb. By using an exacto knife or razor blades most gaskets can be trimmed down however if you try and trim down the ones with steel impregnated in them, you may have to lightly clamp them down in a smooth jaw vise and hand file them to fit using rat tail files or maybe even a small burr bit in a dremel tool.
It's all in the attention to details.
Jim

Some very good suggestions. One question will heat from cause flaking problems. I have also heard smoothing the exterior of the motor will cause the motor to run hotter. Thanks

Smoothing out the exterior of the engine makes the engine run hotter?

I'm sure if there were any detrimental effects to doing this, Troy Trepanier wouldn't do it to all of his multi-hundred thousand dollar cars.

Yes smoothing the surface of the block removes a small percent of the total surface area, but the amount of heat that the removed material was able to dissipate as compared to the smoothed block probably couldn't melt a stick of butter. Your engine was designed to dissipate heat through the cooling system, hence the name 'cooling' system.

If that's not good enough for you, maybe knowing that removing those rough spots helps eliminate the possibility of the formation or cracks will help (not that I've ever heard of a block cracking w/o a good reason, like freezing).