Other Stuff > Tricks & Tips
polishing thread?
Laverdaroo:
A pig isnt it! Sadly Ken's OCD has knackered us ;D ;D
Thatss two out of the threee of us tha thave given up, Imgoing in for round 4 this afternoon, must try harder! ;D 8)
Oddjob:
I've been doing it all afternoon and TBH I find it easy. You can get things looking so that you wonder if it will ever go flat and then suddenly it just starts too. It's have you got the patience to keep at it so you get to that point. I've just spent 4 hours doing the grab rails off my lads VT1100 and those were in a really bad state, now they are starting to look really nice.
Maybe you should have started with easier pieces, brake plates are hard to do, loads of stone chips etc, sprocket covers are not easy either. Clutch covers are better because they are protected by the engine so get less damage. Try a camshaft end cap and practice on that. Or a dipstick.
Oddjob:
Thought I'd pop this up here for those members who seem to have lost hope.
How bad is a casing BEFORE you think it's beyond salvage?
I've seen some bad ones, really bad TBH, seen some on Ebay that I thought were beyond saving but lets be honest, parts are becoming harder to find. NOS parts are starting to dry up and casings when they do appear NOS are very expensive and sometimes even they show damage that detracts from the look. I bought a NOS casing last week and the seller had to reduce the price because of the lacquer peeling off, it didn't look nice TBH but at half the listed price and the fact I was going to polish it anyway I bought it.
Casings usually don't get stored well, thrown in a bucket or an old box and just left for years and years. Some, like my old cases had been chromed and you'd be forgiven for thinking they'd be good as they've already been polished before the chrome was applied but not a bit of it. If the chrome has peeled and then left the damage to the alloy underneath can be severe.
I recently decided to do a CB550F clutch cover, I have 4-5 of them so I went to the box they hide in and just pulled one out, completely at random, I thought doing it that way would avoid any suggestion of picking the best one etc. It was upside down in the box, I'd washed it in petrol and the inside was facing me, looks ok, nice and clean inside, yep that'll do. Jesus what a bad choice, worse case I'd ever seen except for the one I sanded right through but that was before I realised just how bad they can get. If yours has a sort of rash on the surface, like a bad skin condition, black marks all over it or worse some sort of fur growing then you're in for a BAD time trying to polish that baby.
The 550 case is about 50% done and coming on, hours and hours still to be spent on that one but I also had a rotor casing off a 500. Finding one these days without gravel rash where it's gone down the road is hard, this was my old one, been chromed, in fact here's a pic of it as the bike was being restored.
I'd replaced it when the chrome started to peel after a winter using the bike and road salt etc. It wasn't a pretty sight but it was an undamaged case so worth keeping I reckoned.
Had the chrome removed and that revealed all the damage done. Believe me, this case ain't pretty, yet.
So after sitting in a box for a year or so I finally decided to have a go and salvage it. I used my new secret weapons, if they can get this case back to acceptable then they can do any case. I won't bore you with loads of pics as TBH I didn't bother taking any at first, I really thought this was heading for the bin. However it's really coming on so here's a sneak preview.
This is the sort of damage I mean, really deep pits, and this is after working on these areas for some time.
Still working on those but they are starting to disappear.
However this post is about the top section of the rotor cover, the bit everyone sees first, the casing has been sanded and this has revealed the damage, top surface usually gets away with a lot but not this time.
Before.
Now professional polishers show pics of damage on their websites BUT they don't tend to show after shots, just carefully posed pics of complete casings without showing where they've completely failed to fix anything, these shots IMO are excuses, here's what you gave us to start with, of course we are not magicians so don't expect a great finish everywhere. Not, this is the damage and look how good we are, it's all gone away.
So this time I thought, lets show before and after pics.
AFTER. 2.5 hours of work on what's essentially an 8 x 1.5 inch piece of alloy. NOT polished, not been anywhere near the polishing machine, just used my new secret weapons and then finished off with some of my more normal brushes, sanded down to 1000 grit.
Now I'm no different from most members on here, if I can do this then so can you, I'm not gifted, I don't have expensive machinery, I do have patience and time and some basic tools, this means you can do the same.
Next is to finish the case, if that's possible and then polish it. I reckon I can get that back to roughly the same condition as the very first pic where it was chromed. After that, I'll probably throw if in a box for a few more years as I already have a decent rotor cover ;D ;D
Laverdaroo:
Nah,.........looks, sh@te!
;) :D
Sesman:
Secret weapon?
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