Little polishing project

[Thourun]

I recently bought a set of valve covers from a guy on 3SI who lives near me to polish up in my spare time since as you may have guessed I always like to have a little project to keep me busy bettering my car.

Heres what it looks like after being stripped of paint and being sanded up a bunch.


I'm kinda stuck though, I cant get the little pits sanded out of the nooks and cranys. How should I do it? Is there a dremel bit that I could buy with a finer grain than the little sandpaper cylinders that came with it? Or should I just get the sand paper and use it by hand... forever!

Tell me what you guys think.

[Im2Fast4U]

I was gonna say Dremel but I'm not positive if there are bits with a finer grit or not. Good work so far though.

[Thourun]

It looks better in person, no more rough surfaces but those tiny little pits are hard to sand out. I used some of the aluminum polish on a flat surface thats pretty much done and wow, it realy gets it shiny in a hurry. Its gonna be a bitch keeping hte lettering on and getting in between the letters and stuff, I might just leave that all raw and unsanded to help pop out the lettering.

[privatebean]

Thouron, when you say "I cant get the little pits sanded out of the nooks and cranys" are you talking about remaining paint? If so try doing what knight did and drop it in a bucket with paint stripper for 15 minutes and then hose it down.

Although now i'm guessing you already did that when you say it's been stripped of paint. ....hmm

i didn't read through this whole thing...but here is a link with instructions for polishing your valve cover.
http://monninengineering.com/PolishingValve.html

[privatebean]

Oh and once you have your's installed...want to sell me your stock one so I can get started on mine? I've been planning on metalcasting mine for a while now...but would be easier to have a spare to work on and not have my car out of commision while i worked on it.

[2Devious]

I just finished polishing my plenum and painting my front valve cover my self this past Sunday. I will have ot get a pic up here soon.

You can try using the polishing dremmel tips for the pits in the crannies. But it is going to take forever. I wasn't able to find any small/finer grit tips for the dremmel =/
Some fine grit sand paper folded up might be your best option for those hard to get to nooks.

[Musashi3000GT]

Originally Posted by privatebean

Oh and once you have your's installed...want to sell me your stock one so I can get started on mine? I've been planning on metalcasting mine for a while now...but would be easier to have a spare to work on and not have my car out of commision while i worked on it.

Metalcast fades. see my engine in the pic sticky, thats all metal cast red.....well it used to be red, now its like Nissan's sunset orange.....which I like

Booyaah.