New polishing project I am doing

Since I got suspended at work I decided since I have a nice 5 day weekend to work on this project for my 90 vette. It still needs a lot of work of course but I have a considerable amount of the rough texture grinded down. This project will take quite a lot of work to finish though but when done should really brighten up the underhood appearance of this car.

I am also planning in polishing all the serpentine stuff on the car as well since I have a complete spare serpentine system. I just never have liked the looks of polished runners and plenum and powder coated base manifold. Every possible polished part is rhe only way to go.

Here is what the intake and runners started out like. GM intakes are somewhat hard to do because of all the tight areas and sharp bends. I will be removing all casting numbers "logo's on the manifold for a cleaner look as well.



I was concerned about the condition of the runners so decided to lightly sand one area on them and see how they turn out. I will also have to buy runner dent removal kit since these have a few dings in them. Here is what the runner turned out like after about 15 minutes of work.




This part of the process is being done with a dremel and stones of various shapes as well as drum rolls. This process is great for removing casting lines and the rough texture of the manifold. At this point once you get the manifold cut down then you can shape and blend areas for a much cleaner look. I don't have a plenum and and fuel rails at this point but will also show you how to do them as well.









This is a different TPI system I did, however it was never completely finished, but you can see how well they will turn out and the cleaner look without the casting "logos" I even do the bottom of the plenum as well because when the base is polished you will see the ugly bottom of the plenum if it isn't done. To me if every spot isn't done on a TPI it will show on other polished parts and thats why I do all four sides of the plenum.

Looking forward to seeing the finished product.
How about a series of pics showing the different steps involved too?

Using a makita grinder with disc I ground down all the casting "logo's" You need to be carful not to grind them down to far or you will never get the grinding marks out. After these logo's were removed I simply took a drill with 120grit sanding flapper thing to finish sanding where the logo's were.

If polished isn't your thing you can stop at a certain grit and have a nice machined look as well. If say you stopped at 180'240 grit you would even have a much cleaner manifold and if you chose to powdercoat it, you would probably have a very smooth texture.

I will show sanding step as to the texture each grit leaves the manifold at.

But it should start looking like this now. I still have a lot of course texture to remove but that is easy work.

I didn't do a lot of sanding on this, however the nippondenso compressor can be made to look like chrome to. Just takes a lot of sanding is all.

I did some work on the runner today and it seems to be turning out really nice. I got one of the large dents out of it and have a few small dings to keep me busy as well.



Here is the base so far, it's coming along pretty good but still have a lot of work left to do. I've decided to not put it on my vette when done so will probably sell it when finished.

I did about another 45 minutes of sanding on the top of the manifold. There are only a few small areas of rough surface casting left on the manifold now, so now comes the detail sanding and shaping of rough edges. I haven't come across any deep pits on the manifold yet so this one will polish out real nice.

Right now what you see is the manifold at for the most part 120grit and other areas 80 grit. No other tools have been used so far except a dremel and drill with drum rolls.

JeffP1167 said:

I did about another 45 minutes of sanding on the top of the manifold. There are only a few small areas of rough surface casting left on the manifold now, so now comes the detail sanding and shaping of rough edges. I haven't come across any deep pits on the manifold yet so this one will polish out real nice.

Right now what you see is the manifold at for the most part 120grit and other areas 80 grit. No other tools have been used so far except a dremel and drill with drum rolls.

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That's such a lot of work you've put in there mate. It'll look great when you're finished :thumbs:

saudivette said:

That's such a lot of work you've put in there mate. It'll look great when you're finished :thumbs:

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Thanks ... I am going to use emery cutting compound to eliminate much of the hand sanding steps involved. This compound can get it cut down with ease to where I only have to sand with 800wet in most areas. I will basically use a buff pad on my makita grinder to do this.

What's the cutting compound you're talking about? I'm not adverse to hand polishing metal but usually use wet & dry all the way from coarse to fine...

saudivette said:

What's the cutting compound you're talking about? I'm not adverse to hand polishing metal but usually use wet & dry all the way from coarse to fine...

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emery .... I usually stop sanding at 320 to 400 and let this do all the work, on this base I stopped at I think 320grit and machine buffed with emery only.

You can use emery to skip most of the hand sanding grits, it works quite well as you can see. This manifold I never finished though.