Help me polish my engine up some.

After reading about sanding and polishing parts on the engine I decided to try it out today. Took me a good amount of time, my engine is badly oxidized, all over. I just worked on one side, and didn't finish yet as it took longer than I thought it might to get a nice gloss look. I decided to break out my dremel and polishing set on it, and I wanted some of you guys to tell me if what I am doing is removing oxidation, or screwing up whats there. Gonna be a several pics.

Also can I post all the pics I want or is there a limit?

 

Re: Help me polish my up some.

This is an after pic

 

Re: Help me polish my up some.

Nice job! Definitely a 'one piece at a time' task.

 

Re: Help me polish my up some.

Is the dull part in this pic suppose to be shiny. If you look closely where I put the black mark you can see where I buffed one side with my dremel, using the wire brush, and the other part I didn't touch. You can also see in the second pic near the edges, where I didn't touch. Is there an easier way than with the dremel to clean that stuff off? I Can't get into parts where I need to with it, and wanted to make sure it is actually suppose to be shiny. Thanks

 

Do a High-speed Buffing using some #-5 and #-6 Jewelers Rouge.

They'll look better than you could ever imagine!

 

Aye, I looked in home depot, and could only find some ryobi brand polish. They are labeled with letters though, but had a jewelers rouge as one of the ones I could buy. I got these, instead.

4 oz. Stainless Steel Buffing Compound - for cleaning hard metals (nickel & chrome) and for shining soft metals (stainless steel, brass & copper)

4 oz. Plastice Rouge Buffing Compound - for cleaning soft metals & plastices

The jewelers rouge wasn't numbered or anything, it's just called jewelers rouge, but I also had some come with my dremel, it's red, and I can give it a try. What kind of tool are you using to polish with, the dremel is nice for small areas, but larger and it seems to be under sized.

 

Cut-out some disc's of ScotchBrite Pad. 7 or 8 Discs the diameter of the top of a Dannon Yogurt Cup.

Load them on a generic buffing wheel tool for your drill. You need External Star Wasshers and Flat Washers to compress the ScotchBrite Pad Discs and keep them from not spinning on the tool.

Buff with it ... It get's into nooks and cranny's real good.

 

I would also suggest using the largest buffing pad that you can use on each piece. When i was doing mine last winter, I was noticing that i was very hard to get a nice even shin when using a dremel with a small 1" buffing pad. I switched to a die grinder with a much larger 6" pad and found it did a much more even consistent job on the flat sections of the cases.

Now skill and technique have a huge factor in the over all quality of the finish. I started on the left side of the bike and spent hours getting the engine cover done, by the time i moved to the passenger side, the clutch cover from start to finish only took about 30 mins

Also, when i was taking off all of the old chroming and oxidation, i took off some of the black and red paint in the yics lettering. Nail polish has worked great to repaint them. Nice little brush and nice vibraint red color. Boy was the old lady po'd when she found grease on her brush...

 

If you're gonna do all that polishin' you'd better set aside some money for stainles steel screws because you'll be darn unhappy with the fastners you currently have on there.