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Well, long story short....I spent 80+ hrs polishing my plenum and throttle bodies a few weeks back. After what seemed like an eternity of tedious work with a DA, dremel and small hand tools, I began to experiment with alternatives. I figured out a way to achieve my desired results but with ALOT less labor and costs. Using only a blast cabinet and a bench grinder, I was able to strip the powdercoating off my Ash inlet and intercooler piping and mirror polishing them in under 10hrs.....And the story begins.... Cleaned all the old garnet/abrasive out of my cabinet and loaded it up with 30lbs of no.14 ultra fine glass beads.
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Took roughly 3hrs to remove all the silver powder coating off the piping (28 linear feet).
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The blasting left the pipes slightly reflective with a very smooth, silky/satin finish. The glass beads produce very little dust, and have a 30x recycling rate so the 30lbs lasted the whole three hours.
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Setup my grinder with the cutting/buffing wheel on the right, polishing wheel on the left. Advise from experience... Harbor Freight sells the worst polishing pads, compounds and attachments known to man. I picked up these pads from Lowes and they've been excellent and durable.
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Straight from the blast cabinet, the pieces can go right to the buffing/cutting wheel. I bought a 16oz block of each of the following compounds as I plan to polish everything possible as I rework my engine. Red is your starter compound and will level out the surface and produce a decent luster. Periodically rub more onto the wheel as you're going, and every 15min or so, I recommend raking the wheel with a blade (I use a flea comb) to remove excess built up compound and soften pad.
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Five minutes into buffing, wiped down with acetone before moving onto the polishing wheel with white/green compound.
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Side by side with blasted and finished pipe section
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Here's what I managed to blast and polish in 8hrs today.
 "> All in all, it's a lot of standing around and letting the tools do the work. Cheers,
"I love deadlines- I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by"
1980 Datsun 280zx
1991 Nissan 300zx TT
2006 Nissan 350z |
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Fun with Abrasives/Polishing part Deux!! - 
