Polishing made easy - Tip

My side cover where in bad shape and all i did was bring down to 1000 grit and boughta polishing/buff wheel kit for the drill from home depot and and applied a thin layer of mothers chrome polish to the piece getting polished an went to town on it!!!! . my front fork and side covers are mirror and for around 14 dollars!!!! look at my pics of my chopper on my public profile especially at the kicker pedal I polished from a bmx pedal I found on the side of the road.
 
oh ya house, my Bro. did some on the XJ with just the mothers and a drill buffer, looks good, he just wont spend any time on it to make it look better. that stuff works.
 
Yea polishing does suck. I did these back in the day and it took 40 hours to look somewhat decent. Wetsanding and buffing like mentioned above.
SDC10021.jpg

Those wheels have the nastiest clear coat form the factory I have ever delt with. great job
 

Attachments

  • Street tacker build 030.jpg
    Street tacker build 030.jpg
    301 KB · Views: 352
I used to swear by mothers polish but about 5 years ago it seemed they changed or did something. Ever since then I buy a container of it every year or so and every time i end up throwing it away.
 
aussiehard I have three tabs welded on the inside of the main body of the exstinguisher. I installed small selftapping screws in 2 of those tabs to keep it in place. Im gonna end up figuring out something a little more trick here soon.
 
aussiehard I have three tabs welded on the inside of the main body of the exstinguisher. I installed small selftapping screws in 2 of those tabs to keep it in place. Im gonna end up figuring out something a little more trick here soon.

Not to hijack the thread. I have a extinguisher for mine. Going to try and put the key on the neck, havn't figured out where to cut it, join & mount it in the most useable but clean way yet. Let me know when you come up with something trick.
 
When you use stripper on the clear coat, does it have any effect on the black logo, or is that anodized on or something?
 
When you use stripper on the clear coat, does it have any effect on the black logo, or is that anodized on or something?
Engine side covers? yeah it will pull the black but if you go lightly on the stripper in that area it will often be fine and it's easy enough to slop some black back in there and take it off the polished aluminum around it.

My go to metal polish is Blue magic. It has ammonia and some sort of wax? and works really well, leaving a high gloss finish with minimal work. Great by hand or on a wheel.
I keep some paint thinnner in a windex bottle it quickly removes black polish gunk with a simple wipe off. One more hint if you have oxidized paint or some scratches; a little blue magic on a soft rag will do WONDERS! really you could double the value of an old car in short time with this stuff. I think I have tried 8 or 10 chrome cleaners over the years and this is the best I have ever used by far.
 
I'm a Blue Magic fan as well. There was a guy here who responded to just a few questions and then went away, and he wrote about cleaning chrome with that and brass brushes from Walmart. He sounded like he was from the trenches so I tried it and it's great.
 
We've all struggled trying to polish our bikes aluminum bits, I've just discovered the perfect fast and easy method from Caswell. After stripping off the clear coat use this greaseless abrasive paste on a buffing wheel to sand down to the desired finish and then use black and then brown/tripoli buffing compound and different clean wheels of course for the perfect luster.

See the attached and the kit at the bottom of the page, 80 - 600 grit for only $45.00 - awesome.

Their website has a wealth of information about parts finishing, plating, powdercoating, etc all for the hobbyist .

http://www.caswellplating.com/buffs/buffing.htm

Awesome tip. Thanks for posting.

I wonder if I can get my sidecases to look like mirrors....
 
Has anyone sand blasted or soda blasted their motor when it was still assembled in the frame?

Is this a dumb idea, would I screw up my gaskets and other delicate things, even if I taped/covered everything off?

I've been sand everything I can get to but theres just so many nooks I cant reach, I'm not planning on rebuilding my motor anytime soon and I really dont want to take it out of the frame if I dont have to.
 
I like the nylox wheels you chuck in a small drill
439352-4_abrasive_nylon_wheel_brush.jpg

and a cheap gun cleaning kit you can find at Walmart it has brass brushes that get in between the fins. also Paint thinner in spray bottle The Hudson sprayer bottles hold up with thinner in them.

product-photo-4d223ead07a75.png


finish up with some satin sliver spray paint brushed on. This is a heritage motor after using these methods. It was pretty groty when I started.
82hsenginePainted.JPG


And after I sold it.

crudoct12029.jpg
 
I've got a few of the Nylox wheels (well the harbor freight kind anyway), they seem to only offer them in really course grits though, like 400 is the finest I've found.

Basically I sanded 2 tappet covers the other night, took FOREVER, and I went through so much sand paper it wasnt even funny,

I'm looking for a quick easy safe way to get everything evenly surfaced, oxymoron I know (easy, safe and quick)
 
Well, polishing is way too labor intensive for me, and I probably would not do a good job anyway, so I removed the covers from my CB750C and took them to www.hhpolishing.com in Charlotte, NC. They claim to have a proprietary method, and from the results, I don't doubt that they do:

covers11.jpg

covers41.jpg


They did 10 covers for me for $150. Next I'm going to do the same with my other bikes.
 
Last edited:
400 is fine enough then switch to blue magic on a buffing wheel (both can be found at Farm and fleet) they will shine. Use wet paper with water, one sheet will do all your covers. To do one bike a buffing wheel in a bench grinder will do the job. If you tend to do this stuff often the 3/4 HP buffer at harbor fright or manards is a big time saver. Use Caswells buffing compound sticks, black on a sisal wheel then white on a cotton wheel that's what I used on the buffed aluminum on the heritage pictured.
 
A non-chemical method of removing polishing residue and brightening the metal is to use flour on a micro-fiber cloth. The waxy black stuff cakes with the flour, and a light rub breaks it loose, and it won't re-stick, due to the flour, just like rolling pizza dough. Comes away very bright and clean, and you just blow it clear with air. That's how we finish off a mirror polish on aircraft aluminum surfaces.
 
Back
Top