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Rainy days this weekend, so decided to put some ne rocker panels on from corvette America. Shipped to Oz they cane well packaged, but even so the finish wasn’t overly shiny, more a semi gloss, but also had a few scrapes and scratches. I prefer a high sheen so I took to them with a progression of wet & dry grits 240 to start off, then 400, 600, 800. This took a complete day and left a dull sheen.
i already ordered a aluminium polishing set from a distributor in Australia (PolishUp) these polishing wheels and pastes attach via a drill or grinder depending your preference and the job.
This is a first for me, never polished alloy before.. today, took 2 hrs using different polishing applicators and pastes to bring about a decent shine on the new rocker. I can still see room for improvement in my technique, but I’m more than happy with the result. Like everything the end result depends on how much prep work you do, and the more time taken with patience delivers excellent results.
after this, washed rocker to clean of polishing residue and masked offf to paint the black strip where the screws attach to the rocker trim. Using a satin black acrylic with 3 coats
the photo displays the difference, old on left, new on right after the polish, final detail polish still to come before it goes on the Vette.
It's shiny! Does it still have the same stiffness (strength)? The original part had an anodized coating that made the surface harder to resist road rash. That also made the part stronger. When you sanded the part, the anodized layer was lost and you now have only the soft aluminum part remaining. They will look great...for a while, but are likely to get nicked and pitted rather quickly. Hope you don't have any gravel roads to travel and that they stay nice for a long time.
yeah I realised that once I started. I can’t be specific on the weight/ characteristic of the Allumium of the new ones but from looking at the OE and weighing both the corvette America versions appears just as solid if not more so, there are well defined rolled angles which increase the strength but as for road resistance to damage I would say it less now but they sure do look nice. Of course you are correct they will pit and scratch more easily, but outs is never driven on dirt roads, in the rain and is purely a weekend car.
heres what one looks like on the car, now for the drivers side
Here's an idea I had. A couple of years ago I got tired of looking at a very small dent on the passenger side rocker panel that probably only I would notice. I removed the panel and carefully tried to "hammer" out the dent. Long story short, the dent was gone but any kind of polishing I did, made it look worse and more obvious. I went to a local company that wraps cars, among other things, with rocker my panel in hand. They weren't interested in doing such a small job, however, they sold me a roll of their chrome wrap, enough to do two in case I screwed up my first attempt. I measured, cut, placed it on the panel and did some "fine tune" cutting with a very sharp razor blade and am very happy with the result. I folded the edges around the bottom and sides of the panel so it's not obvious of a wrap ending and just fine tuned the cuts along the top edge where the black stripe starts. Since I did it, I have no sign of it even starting to come off. Here are a few pics, you can see the reflection of the floor in the panel. Tape from a "Wrap Shop". Shiny Another pic.
Polished rocker panels
