Well I call it the lonely stranger.
Materials
1 porno
1 bottle of moms lotion
1 roll of towels for cleanup
Step 1: start by sitting on your left hand until its numb.
Step 2: apply generous amounts of lubricant to necessary areas
Step 3: begin viewing selected reading materials
Step 4: begin polishing with left hand until fully polished.
Step 5: cover and let simmer at 350 until done.
Haha just kidding.
Actually I started with 300 grit paper wiping with paint thinner between sanding. Moved to 600 then 1000. Then I let my arm rest. Lol. I then took it over to the 8" bench buffer. Began with red compound for about 2 hours then finished off with white compound for about an hour. Topped it off with mothers mag polishing compound.
Beware: this is a very dirty job. You'll want rubber gloves, a mask, and plenty of beer. I
think i had about 4.5 hours in just that tube.
Here it is installed.
Im going to do the other side tomorrow. Going to attempt to polish down the factory elbow. Not sure how easy that's going to be as its very rough.
Great job, Whats bad is your engine bay is clean but with the polished tube everything seems really dull especially the alternator, I say polish everything out AC hoses and all. Just a tip if you get some scotch brite pads from your local parts store cut them into squares stack them staggered and mount to your grinder you can skip lots of the hand stuff.
Sweet. I've got like 3 bags down in the shop somewhere. I may try that. I almost started with a flap disc and my buddy happened to call right when I was going to turn the grinder on. Haha. He said I would've been buying new tubes. It may actually be necessary on the elbow though. I hate messing with auto ac so i won't be messing with any of that crap. Actually my engine is really dirty right now. I usually keep everything clean and armoralled. But just been too busy lately.
Thanks man for the info. Again, great looking part and great job. Alot of people have asked about chrome pipes and as long as folks dont mind putting in some good ole fashioned elbow grease, this is something that can be done relatively inexpensively and looks awesome. Again thanks and good job.
Thanks man. Ya, matter of fact didn't cost a dime. I had all the sandpaper and compound. My time is all it cost me so you can't beat that. Its not like I had anything else going on since I haven't been selling any tree jobs lately.
The SB squares work awesome on an angle grinder or an air grinder also, I do 3" squares and alternate them or you can keep them as a square. Mixed with the polish you are using on the cloth wheel you will see results really fast and its a lot cheaper than sandpaper.
You can buy square blocks in all sorts of grit, they will only hit on the corners so you can take small amounts off but you have to have a really steady hand or it can get really deep really fast. I would probably just use a flat file to get the large part down then a really rough paper then start with the SB pads. I have a set of polishing wheels that step down in the proper order from when I polished stainless but it would be cheaper to pay someone to do the work than buy all the Wheels. If you have a air grinder you can get either rolled sandpaper or small stones that you can control really easy but I would only use this on the really high parts. Just my .02
flap can remove a lot of material but if you have a lighter grit or a well worn one you would probably be fine, I would grind with piece on its side so you can see the amount you are taking away as you are grinding. I keep a lot of used flap disc around for jobs that need light grinding. Go slow and check your progress often.
Another good choice would be a rubber backing pad for some of the round sanding disc it will flex combine that with some 220 paper and you wont dig into the metal that bad. With this setup keep the disc flat any angle and it turns into a cut off wheel real quick.
Got some more done today did the intake side tube today and the elbow. I kind of got lazy with it and am not really happy with the quality but non the less its polished.
On the elbow I decided to remove a couple nubs and one of thE gussets to make those process a little bit easier and to clean it up some.
I started with a flap disc then switched 120 grit paper then too 300,600,1000, and then polished.
Here's what I started with.
Umm I started about 11 this morning and was done around 3. The flap disc did awesome. I wish i could've gotten it down in the nooks and crannies a little more. I used it to delete the nubs and the one gusset then just used a file to feather in the flange where the gusset was. The flap disc will leave little flat sided rows but once you hit it with the 120 everything smoothes out. I used an orbital sander to do the 120, worked great! What would make this job a ton easier is to have one of those triangle shaped vibrating sanders. I had to get in the corners with my fingers which was a pain staking process. You could probably cut an hour off with that.
I thought this metal wasn't going to polish up with a deep shine since it was cast and rough but as soon as i touched it to the wheel with red it was mirror shined. I think i only spent about 20 mins on the buffer with the elbow.
I've been thinking about making a polished pan that covers the pass side battery and vacuum equipment. If you polished your tubes it'd be looking pretty sharp in there.
Have you seen the polished stainless or aluminum hood covers some guys attach to the bottom side of the hood? I want one really bad, was thinking of making my own. I hate the look of the dirty fiberglass crap on there.
You need aluminum oil and fuel caps to top that off. I'm thinking red would look good. ; )
Dam you must love cuddling up with your engine and armoral. Haha
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