My ever growing collection of polished parts

Having problems with getting pic's up?

I emailed them to raid to post

To Raid

I need help with paint so get it to me and I'll get going on it. The biggest part is the hand sanding. That takes time, the polishing goes fast.

Them are some sweet looking parts :thumbsup:

patch68 said:

Them are some sweet looking parts :thumbsup:

Click to expand...

:agree:

That is sweet. Can you give some directions to your success. I plan on polishing my stock 87 rims this weekend. I'm stripping the clear coat with some type of paint stripper and no that I need to end the job by polishing with mothers. It's the sanding I'm unsure of.....wet or dry? What grit? Ect..........

Want my rims to look like your parts.artyon:

Those are friggn sweet

Sanding

For a clearcoated piece that is already smooth underneath, no sanding is desired. You would just make scratches that have to be polished out. There are several abrasive sticks available. I use brown first and switch to white with a loose sewn wheel to finish. You need separate wheels. Sanding is involved to get the casting marks to go away for a nice smooth surface. When I started this project I tried to buff it all out, possible, but certainly no fun. I use 220 grit emery cloth and switch to 400 before polishing. I now spend more time sanding and less polishing. The results are better and sanding is much quieter. Let me know how your wheels come out. They are already polished so repolishing them will be a snap.

clearcoat is great protection from road salt, but cc itself is quite soft and dulls (fine scratching) rather easily...also retains moisture where large debris may ''chip'' out a hole in the cc and cause spots of corrosion to form between surrounding cc and the alum wheel...if you're living right, once the cc is stripped, the alum wheel surface can be brought to better-than -new shine by just polish, but if you've been takin the long way home with the babysitter, sanding (wet is faster/ better) will be req'd before the polish...leave the cc OFF unless more salt is on the menu.

Thanks guys, I post pics when done. I plan on stripping the clear coat with paint stripper then polishing the hell out of them with mothers. Doesn't sound like I need to sand in this case.:cheers:

Wow! That looks great! Polished aluminum really makes an engine compartment (or a work bench) look good.

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OOH Shiny:thumbsup:

Do you plan on "clearcoating" any of the polished parts or if not how will you preserve the shine? I have polished a few parts in my day and the shine of course never lasts forever. I generally employ the Mother's polish method of restoring the shine but that does require a lot of elbow grease. I'm always looking for an easier way, so any advice or learned experience, would be greatly appreciated.
The parts look great and for my money nothing looks better than polished aluminum in an engine compartment (not even chrome.) Great job.

once a month

I figure to spend 3-4 hours once a month. I tried a clearcoat product and it did not react to the engine heat very well and got cloudy like wheels do over time. I just don't want to get caught in the rain. Here in Florida it's usually 20 minutes of rain and it's dry again in another 20. I'll just pull over and wait it out. Thank you all very much for the compliments.

That's been my experience as well. Clearcoat, even the advertised high temp stuff, and engine heat just don't seem to play well together. It dulls (or actually sort of yellows) over time and then you are stuck with having to strip and repolish. I stripped and polished my rims some time ago and did not re-apply the clearcoat. I have resigned to the fact that you just have to polish every once in a while. Mine are certainly due at the moment.

I plan on polishing my plenum and runners as you did, and maybe some other parts. I used zoopseal on my motorcycle frame after it was polished and it worked great. I'll find out if it will hold up to the temps of the engine compartment once the parts are finished. :thumbsup: