after the hole sanding process ,starting at 80# working all the way thru up to at least 1000# ive also found if you can stretch it to 1500# you can get a bit more shine out of it,

 

when you get to that stage ,it will almost look polished as it is! ,but all that sanding is realy just the prep work for the actual polishing ,

 

that is done in 2 stages, first stage is the detail stage,polishing the very small holes ridges,bumps,tight to get places,

 

second stage is the over all stage ,doing the large areas that are easy ,and giving the item an over all shine,

 

you could do it by hand if you didint have the tools ,but at the very least you should try to use a electic hand drill,actualy my weapon of choice, my ryobi 750 watt electric drill works very well,

 

for the detail work you could use the hand drill iff desperate but its large and harder to use when trying to get those small areas, best option is a dremel,or an air drill or die grinder type tool, you can get a cheap rip off of the dremel on ebay for a bout 50 bucks from memory ,usualy comes with a hole bunch of polishing wheels and buff pads,

 

very handy ,or if you want to do alot of detail polishing then definatley need one of these kits::

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

also the main polishing on the drill can be done using a buffing pad or mop ,also can find these at ebay but there a little pricey there, best to go to bunnings warehouse,in the tool section they have buff mops for between 15- how ever much you want to spend,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

your also going to need some sort of polish,theres autosol ,and many metal polishes out there,personaly i think these are best for bringing the shine back up on an item that has been polished before,and may have lost its shine from sitting a while,

best option here is some cutters or compounds of a corse nature, you want to cutt the surface to bring up the shine,same theroy as a cut and polish on your paint, so auto cutters /polish works surprisingly well here also,

 

 

this is my fav for this job, 3m perfect cut 3 ,its a white paste that feels rather gritty but it works extremly well on freshly sanded alloy,or tho a little pricey to get in the store,general compounds and cutting polishes would work rather the same....

 

Edited September 13, 201016 yr by JDM55

there the tools you realy need to make this work properly,not terribley exspensive,

 

the little buffs cost me 18 dollars

the mop buff cost me about 21 dollars

and the cutters were free from work

the dremel was about 65 off ebay

and the hand drill about 50 or 60 in bunnings

 

so if you intend to do a fair bit of this sort of thing ,then thats your ruff start costs i guess,

 

any way back to the goods,sanding done and on with the fun part,

 

best to wear goggles or some sort of eye protection when doing this as the cutters can fly every where!,

rubber gloves are recomended to,things get a bit messy and alot of black sludge is produced,

some overalls or some kind of suit to protect your clothing can help to if you don't want to get covered in sludgey stuff, but most importantly is the eye protecting,if you can't see then you can't apreciate the hard hours of sanding and see the gleaming master piece yourve created hahahah :dance:

 

so back to the alt ::

 

 

 

i use a little bit of water in a spray bottle to get the polish to spread a bit,also keeps the heat down on the area your polishing,as for the best way to do this, ive found a touch of water on first,add a bit of compound/polish of your choice( don't need very much at all) then start by spreading the compound around the area you want to polish, going from there you can turn up the speed on your dremel and start to get a bit of a shine hapening, once the area has a decent shine, you can add a tiny bit more compound ,and speed the dremel up further to get a final shine,

this is realy where you see the hard sanding pay off,or on the other hand where you see how slack you were,lol

 

 

these ones i was using the dremel and a small tiped buff pad from the pack shown earlyier,

and just going up and down the slots and holes,and some of the hard areas first,

doesnt look like it from the terrible pictures,of my awesum phone camera, but the shine is almost instant,when you get the machine going...

 

can see a little better in this one the top right hand slots starting to get shiny virginey :rocknroll:

 

 

now just a quick reminder of what i started with and the state of it, to help compare,

after the detail polishing the main big areas were polished with the big wheel,then cleaned up ,

rinsed in hot water,gets rid of the polish still stuck in gaps,an old tooth brush is useful to dislodge stuborn polish too( just don't go using it on your teeth afterwards) :blinks:

 

 

 

 

 

oh yes she was a sexy beast of a thing,lol

and then final products of the work done:::

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

so hopefully all that burble was of some interest to someone ,and learnt alittle about polishing,

by no means was i say ing that is the only way to do it ,there are many ways ,that is just the process i use,since i know it works well for what i want,

looks heaps better than rusty coroded crust covered in dirt any way you think????????????????????? :rock: :rock: :rock: :rock:

top stuff mate looks awesome

with the sr/ca conversion do you have to run an aftermarket speedo?

with the sr/ca conversion do you have to run an aftermarket speedo?

 

 

yes you do sort of ,well you can't use the corolla one its a cable driven speedo ,where as the 180sx had a digial/electric speedo, I'm using a 180sx dash cluster, hopefully i can figure out how to wire in the speedo too ,lol theres a lot of wires coning of that thing,

may do a little write up on it a bit further down the track,

 

i think most people just go for autometer gauges and that, i wanted more a factory look ,so going to try the 180 dash......

pretty much decided on my colour today was forced into it as i needed these alt parts painted,

so here it is,or at least something very close to this .....

 

 

 

with the sr/ca conversion do you have to run an aftermarket speedo?

 

The older bluebird series 1, 2 and 3 sender is cable, and bolts straight into the sr20 gearbox so you can use the factory corolla cable.

cheers dude you are the man.

looks overrated! did you give it a coat of 2 pack clear?

clear on base painting for sure looks wicked... fairly recent holden colour??

The older bluebird series 1, 2 and 3 sender is cable, and bolts straight into the sr20 gearbox so you can use the factory corolla cable.

 

nice! never new that one , would you need to calibrate the speedo at all with that set up?

i got an rb20 gearbox not sr but i think the cable input thing are the same ,

looks overrated! did you give it a coat of 2 pack clear?

 

 

yeah i did evan, 4 coats of base coat, with 2 coats ppg deltron 2 pak clear,

sure does looks nice and bright ,which is how i like my colours :lol:

clear on base painting for sure looks wicked... fairly recent holden colour??

 

 

 

good spotting there mate ,yeah its a recent holden clolour,called voodoo,but ive thrown in a few extra spices to the mix :P