Valve cover resto advice

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Pitter Patter

Joined
Jan 19, 2021
Threads
60
Messages
533
Location
Renton, WA
Cleaned my valve cover then did some polishing. Determined I shouldn’t have skipped the sanding phases so I cleaned the polish off. Everything I’m reading recommends starting at 220 grit and working your way up. 220 seems too aggressive given how clean I’ve managed to get this. The most tarnished section is shown in the last pic.

Questions:
1. Should I start at 400? Or is that a waste of time?
2. How fine should I go before final polish? I have paper up to 2,000.

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Vapor blast it. It will get it back to the factory aluminum look, unless you want it truly polished? It would still probably give a good base to start polishing by removing most of the contamination.
 
The real trick is a polishing wheel or rotary polisher, most everything you're looking at will come out that way with various compounds. I'd recommend that over sitting with sand paper. OR drop off at a truck wash/polishing outfit, they do this all day/night and are absolute maniacs at making aluminum shine for not much money. I paid $100 for them to buff to mirror shine.

If your goal is doing it yourself, get a buffing wheel and various polishing compounds to get it done in short order.
 
"Rough" surfaces dissipate heat heat way better. Back in the day some one chromed a detroit V8 - they could get it to cool with one radiator.
 
mattressking said:
The real trick is a polishing wheel or rotary polisher, most everything you're looking at will come out that way with various compounds. I'd recommend that over sitting with sand paper. OR drop off at a truck wash/polishing outfit, they do this all day/night and are absolute maniacs at making aluminum shine for not much money. I paid $100 for them to buff to mirror shine.

If your goal is doing it yourself, get a buffing wheel and various polishing compounds to get it done in short order.
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Yes, trying to do as many things myself as possible. I have an 8” grinder I can swap some buffing wheels on. Seems no one is recommending sanding?
 
Pitter Patter said:
Seems no one is recommending sanding?
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Depends what level of shiny you want.

If you want a flawless mirror finish upto probably be stopping with the sanding around 3000 grit before going into compounds and pads

The bitch is getting the sanding marks from the previous grits out.
 
Pitter Patter said:
Cleaned my valve cover then did some polishing. Determined I shouldn’t have skipped the sanding phases so I cleaned the polish off. Everything I’m reading recommends starting at 220 grit and working your way up. 220 seems too aggressive given how clean I’ve managed to get this. The most tarnished section is shown in the last pic.

Questions:
1. Should I start at 400? Or is that a waste of time?
2. How fine should I go before final polish? I have paper up to 2,000.

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Or... (and I don't mean to be controversial here)... Just bolt it back on the 50yo(?) truck already, and be happy that it already looks amazing!
 
mattressking said:
If you’re painting, I’d personally only recommend 2k paint in a can, standard paint cans are just meh for durability.

This is mild sanding and precleaning with steel wool then all done with buffing wheel.

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That’s what I’m trying to achieve. Honestly a little too shinny for me but I want to learn this process so I’ll follow your advice and post how it turns out
 
Decided to be done with this. For now, might circle back to make it nicer but it’s good’nuf. Here’s what I learned.

Tried sanding one area with 400 and going up. Way too aggressive and created a lot of work for myself to get those scratches out.

Cleaning and polishing also doesn’t yield a good result. There’s a grime/coating/oxidation that it just can’t get through. I tried all manner of wheel and buffing/polishing compounds.

Best outcome results from gently hand sanding with a 1,000 or higher sandpaper then buffing and polishing. I’m not willing to do the whole thing like that because it just doesn’t seem worth it.

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