Jump to content
SAU Community

Recommended Posts

my car (R32 GTR) is down at the moment (damn air regulator, by the way for anyone thinking of using Subaru Upper Engine Cleaner to clean the engine DONT!!)

and it will be down for the weekend so i thought i would use the downtime to polish my intake plenum, coil cover and twin turbo pipe thing (intake plenum and coil cover both painted Black)

so i was just wondering has anyone done this before and have some recommendations or interesting little tid bits/ products that may help or be good

could use info for tutorial on how to do this...

any info would be muchly appreciated

Thanks

RellikZephyr

Link to comment
https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/87903-polishing-intake-plenum/
Share on other sites

I prefer polishing as it is more resistant to scrathes etc, but remember maintenance of anything polished can be a pain also...

I did my SR20 cover one weekend...but with the help of a slab of beer and some bored mates!!!

I will be doing my RB25 soon, as soon as I get another car so I have the time that is!!!

How DID you do that? what product/material did you use?

i wanted chrome but the shop said chrome on ally on hot surfaces will eventually peel and they refused to do it, so we polished in the shed, and using lotsa sand paper, starting by removing the black paint which is tough shit :P flat disk on a grinder is easiest, without making a mess of it, and then hand sanding all the shitty fiddly bits, start on medium paper, to get pits out and then go down to like 800 grit wet and dry with water.

then use hard buffing wheel on bench grinder, then softer wheel and then finally a polishing wheel and use polishing compound on the bench grinder, and then finally finish off with autosol by hand to protect it :D

ive done my alternator, throttle brackets, cooler piping, sump, ignitor box, and a few other bits and peices also, anything ally is polishable :)

Note: i did all the parts including plenum when removed from the engine

good luck

Edited by StageZilla

Stagezilla, how long did it take you to just do the valve cover? I figure that'd be the quickest as it's mostly flat surfaces so possible to be done with an orbital sander for the most of it... That said Im thinking of doing that first, will probably make the biggest difference to the engine bay too.. Cheers

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now


  • Similar Content

  • Latest Posts

    • With stone chips, you really can't just try to fill them. You really have to sand that spot to lower the edges of the chip, so that the filler will end up covering a wider patch than just the chip. Otherwise, you're trying to have a sharp edged paint surface match up to some filler, and they just do not sand the same and you always end up with a noticable transition. A bunch of adjacent chips should be well sanded back, to round off all those edges, and use a lot (in a relative sense) of filler to raise the whole area back.
    • To expand on this to help understanding... The bigger/longer the block is, the more it's going to work to sit on your far away high areas, and not touch the low stuff in the middle. When you throw the guide coat, and give it a quick go with a big block, guide coat will disappear in the high spots. If those high spots are in the correct position where the panel should be, stop sanding, and fill the low spots. However, using a small block, you "fall off" one of the high spots, and now your sanding the "side of the hill". Your little block would have been great for the stone chips, where you only use a very small amount of filler, so you're sanding and area let's say the size of a 5/10cent piece, with something that is 75*150. For the big panel, go bigger!   And now I'll go back to my "body work sucks, it takes too much patience, and I don't have it" PS, I thought your picture with coloured circles was an ultra sound... That's after my brain thought you were trying to make a dick and balls drawing...
    • Oh I probably didn't speak enough about the small sanding block for blocking large areas.  In the video about 3 minutes in, he talks about creating valleys in the panel. This is the issue with using a small sanding block for a large area, it's way too easy to create the valleys he is talking about. With a large block its much easier to create a nice flat surface.  Hard to explain but in practice you'll notice the difference straight away using the large block. 
    • Yep I guessed as much. You'll find life much easier with a large block something like this -  https://wholesalepaint.com.au/products/dura-block-long-hook-loop-sanding-block-100-eva-rubber-af4437 This is a good demo video of something like this in use -    You have turned your small rock chip holes into large low spots. You'll need to fill and block these low spots.  It's always a little hard not seeing it in person, but yes I would go ahead and lay filler over the whole area. Have a good look at the video I linked, it's a very good example of all the things you're doing. They went to bare metal, they are using guide coat, they are doing a skim coat with the filler and blocking it back. If what you're doing doesn't look like what they are doing, that's a big hint for you  
×
×
  • Create New...