Polish Valve cover

[Rendon LX-i]

Ok guys help me out here. yes i tryed searching. Im going to do my valve cover no paint just take off the power coating and make it polished. i seen some memebers do it on here. So how do u do this. Just take off the power coating and polished it or what? And can i see pics

[NXRacer]

kroy has done one and knows how to do it i believe.

[cvergi01]

I just got a Haynes Xtreme Performance manual...they say just what you think...remove the paint, sand it down with course grit, then fine. I can get the book and tell you exactly what they say, but that's the jist

[k-roy]

I tried, I gave up because I hate working with steel. Its painted red now and looks decent. If you have an aluminum valve cover polishing is a breeze.

['A20A3']

I polished mine. It was all flaking and looked like shit, so I took it off and used a grinder with a very fine pad and got all the old paint off. However, I strongly recommend that you put a high heat clear coat over it after you polish it to prevent it from rusting.

I still need to fine tune mine in a few spots, and then I'm painting it white.

[86LXItooFAST4me]

what about "bluing" it like you would do a gun? is that just a stupid suggestion or would that work?

[Vinny]

I may try and bead blast my spare cover this weekend just to see what it does. I'm curious

[86LXItooFAST4me]

man vinny, im at work and your avator or what ever almost got me in trouble

What is bead blasting? i mean i know it like sand blasting but what kinda material is used?

[Vinny]

depends theres different kind of machines that use different media. Most use like glass beads, sand, silica and on and on just depends on the grade. some even use plastic......

[Rendon LX-i]

So just take off the old power coated shit sand it down with fine grit paper , and use a wire brush to make it shiny. I have aluminum valve cover so i dont think it would be that hard. Any one have a pic of there valve cover polished? and how u did it just to help me out a little

[86 barnstormer]

i used a wire wheel and it does a damn good job. i don't have anyway to post pics but it will shine.

[superguillermo]

Jasco Graffiti & paint remover....spray it on...leave for 10 min....and the powder coat comes off like butter! I used it to remove the powder coating on my springs. Works really good.

[customandsound]

this is what you need to do to get a high luster finish .... i do this for a living :

What dose it take to get you part's to a high luster?
1.First the part is cleaned with a chemical solution to remove grease and grime
2.Next the part is stripped of paint or stock powder coating
3.The next step is to use sanding materials to remove all casting marks and leave a smooth surface
4. Next the part is polishing black emery compound. This step is the longest part
5.Then it is repeated with tripoli compound
6. Followed by a white compound. To bring it to a high luster !!!!!!!!!!

as for paint removal you can use a stripper like aircraft paint remover or you can toss it in a bead blaster ... i use a bead blaster with a scat mix ... i blast both side's to get a clean part ... you need to remove all the grease and dirt ... you can use a hand grinder ( i got a baldor bench mount) here is the extact prep :
after stripping


An Introduction to Buffing & Polishing

Buffing and polishing using wheels and 'compounds' is somewhat like using wet and dry sanding paper, only much faster. Instead of using 'elbow grease' you will be using the power and speed of an electric motor. The edge, or face, of the wheel is the 'sanding block', which carries a thin layer of 'compound' which is the sandpaper. Varying types of wheel are available, and the different grades of compound are scaled similar to sandpaper. The compounds are made from a wax substance which has the different abrasive powders added to it. When this hard block is applied to the edge of a spinning buffing wheel, the heat from the friction melts the wax, and both wax and abrasive are applied in a thin slick to the face of the wheel. The objective of buffing and polishing is to make a rough surface into a smooth one and, of course, each work piece will be in a different condition, so will need different procedures. Imagine the surface magnified thousands of times, it will look like jagged mountains and valleys. By repeated abrasion, you are going to wear down those mountains until they are old, soft, rolling hills! Then they will not dissipate the light, but reflect it. It is the reflection that makes the buffed part appear shiny


DETERMINING GRIT SIZES of SANDPAPERS and BUFFING COMPOUNDS

To successfully remove the scratch, ALL of the material around the scratch has to be disposed of. In our example, this means a lot of aluminum! Initially, we are concerned with getting as much aluminum sanded off as quickly as possible, so we would use the coarsest abrasive available, say a 40 grit sandpaper.on a flat block. It would be of NO USE to try to buff out this deep scratch with a buffing wheel, because the wheel would remove more material from the hole, as well as the surrounding areas.
By keeping the abrasive on a flat block, no further material can be removed from the hole.As the scratch is lessened, the grit size of paper is reduced from 40, to 80, 120, 240, 320 and finally 600.Once the surrounding material is removed, then the actual polishing can be started.
Buffing compounds will be determined by the size of the scratches. If you have used a 600 grit paper, you may like to proceed directly to a white buffing compound. If fine scratches are visible, then you'll need to ‘back off’ and go to the black compound before retrying the white.

if you need to know more about this let me know ......
you can get what you need to polish at home depot or sear's
it is simple to do and when you figure it out you will get it done quick .....

[customandsound]

steel cover's can be polished to a chrome finish .. once you get it polished to you liking coat it with a high grade carnuba wax ... don't clear it .. it will be cloudy if you do ..... when you are done you should have some thing like this (i should own stock in summit racing )

[carotman]

Very interesting!!!

I'll need to buy a buffing wheel and try that!

[customandsound]

carot ... it is simple

[sl103]

I polish valve covers for $75 shipped. I am not driving my car so if you need a valve cover from the A20A1 88accord then i have a core for you. Look at the other post with some of our work.

Shawn