As my car will sit dormant for a month i have a chance to polish the plenum, runners and shine up those ugly valve covers. What are you guys using to get these mirror finishes out of them? What all do i need to take off/label etc and what do i need to get them looking good? Should i do a 160 stat now while ill have it apart or wait since winter is approaching?

Thanks in advance, any input helps. :cheers:

 

Start sanding on them with 100 grit. Work your way down in steps until you end with 2000 grit. Then hit them with some aluminum polish and the shine will come out. It will take a little work but you should be able to get them to shine nicely. As far as the 160 stat, I'm pretty sure you will have to get your chip reprogramed for that. I used a 180 stat and it works fine with stock chip. :cheers: P.S. Once you get down to the fine sandpaper, you should wet sand with some water with a little dishwashing soap in it.


[Modified by KYVette90, 10:14 PM 10/17/2001]

 

the sanding will take out the texture and the polish will give them that chrome look correct? should i use the dremel with the polisher attachment when i get that far? Where do i get the polish and what kind?
Thanks.

 

For polish, I would recomend a product called Flitz. Most hot rod shops or speed shops cary it, but I believe their website is http://www.flitz.com. This stuff is awesome....brings out a helluva shine.

 

How much of that flitz stuff will i need?

 

i started polishing my plenum once, the i decided "this sucks" during the middle of it and painted it the same color as the paint of my car. your gonna have a blast polishing it.

 

But if you stick with it, it will wind up looking like this.

 

Save yourself the hours of labor and have a polishing shop do it for you. I just had my TPIS intake, SLP runners, plenum & distr. cover polished to a chrome like luster for $200. The result is well worth it. I'm now going to have these parts powder coated in clear. For the valve covers alot of polishers won't touch them because they're magnesium. I did however find someone who polished them for $40. The only problem is that they got an ugly haze from being exposed to air. They need to be clear coated right after polishing to maintain the luster. Gotta do 'em over now.

 

i didnt write my previous post clearly. i got mine all the way to a polish, i just didnt like the way it looked. turned out just like your plenum looks. i wanted it chrome like reflective. i like the way mine is better than polished now though. i got the plenum all smoothed out with sand paper, hit it up with some hi temp primer, wetsanded with 400, high temp- ultra high gloss black and some high temp clear, then wet sanded with 1500 then 2000, looks very :cool: did the same thing to the runners and manifold, just didnt wetsand the manifold. ill snap some pictures when i can.

 

Jsailor24,
It took me a couple hours to polish up my plenum, but I love the end result, but the best part is I did it myself. If you get satisfaction from doing something like this yourself (some people don't), it's pretty easy.
I have a cheap drill press that I mounted one of those sanding disks that you can get at Home Depot that uses the sticky backed sandpaper disks (easy to replace), which enabled me to move the plenum around where it needed to be sanded. Like mentioned above, I started with 80 grit and removed all the rough aluminum, then went to a fine grit. Then I removed the sanding disk, and I put a buffing wheel in it's place with Tripoli buffing compound, then I used a different buffing wheel with fine jewlers polishing compound (I used two different buffing wheels due to the different polishing compounds). It comes out looking like chrome. You can pick up all of this stuff at a Home Depot or Lowes. I basically only shined up the top, and some of the sides of the plenum. The fuel rails look good polished up also.
I then put in a wire brush wheel and went over the runners, and as much of the base as I could. The wire brush alone really makes the runners look good. I finished it up with orange inbetween the fins. This especially makes the fuel rails stand out.
Put a good coat of wax on it because the polished aluminum tarnishes easily.

 

Working on getting the plenum off. Damn lower runner bolts, How much crap do you have to take off to get to them? On the pass. side, is there a runner bolt under all that TB crap?

 

Yes there is another bolt that holds the runners on underneath the plenum. You need to get a shop manual as your next mod. It'll become your best friend.

 

I didn't even touch the lower runner bolts any of the times I have removed just the plenum.

Bob

 

I've taken my plenum off in under 20 mins. (should I be proud, or ashamed because I've had to do it so often?) I take the top 8 bolts out, but I loosen the passanger side bottom bolts just enough to be able to move the runners over a fuzz, which gives me a little room to wiggle the plenum off it's gaskets. The inside bottom bolt on the passanger side is easy to get at with a long extension. I don't even try to loosen the drivers side bottom bolts, I remember how difficult the one near the brake booster/firewall was to get at.
It's takes a little time the first time you do it.

 

So if you polish it enough, it turns blue? :lol: :lol: