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polished my mani, valve cover and throttle body doesn't look too bad what you think?

.... you are my new hero. omfg how did you do that? please tell

Bochek

I just polished it using different grades of paper then used a buffing wheel and polishing compound, takes forever to do it but looks good.

However, one thing to point out it's never going to be perfect especially on the manifold. there's just 2 many places you can't get with the polishing wheel. but at least it gives the chrome effect without chroming

how much did you sand off?

your V6 on the mani disapeared lol so it looks...defantly sweet tho, i'm impressed.

I wonder what it woudl look like bead blasted then sanded/buffed? Might take some time off your hands

Bead blasting doesn't take that much off the surface to really amount to much sanding. Looks good though. I have thought about sanding a bit on mine too, but all the tiny spots stopped me. I didn't want a "kinda" polished look and don't have the patients to acutally get them all.

PS, you can use a Dremel with polishing wheels to get smaller areas.

good call with the dremmel..

and did you it by hand? how long did it take?

That looks awesome man. I would take Pats advice and use a Dremel to get to all those little areas. But from what i can see in the picture it looks awesome.


Keith

Okay so now i'm gonna let you all in on a little secret it didn't take as long as you might think.

I used what is called fan wheels on a drill. go to your hardware store to the part where the accessories are and you hopefully will see a shaft to go into the drill with like a circular fan on the end. use different grits of this then go on to polish it. like i said mine took me a couple of days instead of weeks. I've got some more polishing to do today, i'll take some photo's and if you guys want i'll make a thread for FAQ or sticky but that's up to you. It'll show you how to have a clean (but not perfect) engine bay in a weekend!

I sent a valve cover to 'proffessionals' with a good reputation in the industry to be polished. I paid like a $100 and wasn't happy with the outcome so although my efforts are only similar they were mine and i did them

I may be persuaded to do polishing but at a cost, but this will only be within the uk. I'll see how it goes lol

the dremel works well but there are still bits you can't get to.

i gritblasted all the areas which i didn't consider massivelly important just to make them look silver again. All i wanted to achieve was tidy up thew engine bay. once my kit is fitted if i have my way i'll be ripping this new engine out and dropping a ze next year

Yeah even the Dremel will not get to some parts, but it will get most of what the fan wheel will not get. You should also always bead blast any part before polishing.
PS, you usually use a fan wheel on a grinder (replace the grinding wheel with the fan wheel) That is how polishers do it anyway. Then use the same type of wheel, but with a pad on it and some metal polish to finish the job.

Are you going to coat it with something to avoid oxidizing?

I heard clear coat yellows over time.

I have also heard some use carnuba, but i would imagine that would discolor and attract crap over time too.

I use clear coat on all my steel work that i do. I've never encountered yellowing.

It might be a different story if you put it on your manifold because of the head, BUT, you could probably get high temp stuff.

Where'd the pics go?

BADMX3 wrote:polished my mani, valve cover and throttle body doesn't look too bad what you think?

There's no pics. Where did it go?