Just wanted to show you guys/gals...

what a motivated XJ'r can do with some aircraft stripper, a pad of no. 1 steelwool, a auto polisher and some metal polish can do to a shock. The only rust left is down at the bottom of the shock where it rusted through. These shocks took about 40 mins from start to finish, and they were baaaad too. This is on an x I picked up for a little of nothing and I've been experimenting on it to find the best way to get my other x to look it's best. I'll tell you, my x that I'm keeping, just might be getting a bit jealous...enjoy

 

Great job. I was thinking about some "Mothers" on a Dremel tool with a buffing wheel, but tell me about this aircraft stripper.
Gary

 

niiiiice dude.... mine were shot... so I needed new ones anyhow... but I'll keep that in mind for some other things

 

Here is how I did this

The clearcoat was still on the top of the shocks. I used the kleen strip aircraft stripper to get the clear coat off (I didn't really like this stuff, bought at walmart...I bought some other stuff at auto zone and it worked better for other apps). What clearcoat didn't come off I used no. 1 steel wool to remove the rest. After that I took the pad (starting at the top) and worked the pad under the spring onto the under portion of the shock (the part that seems to get the most rusty). I turned the shock perpendicular to me and ran the steel wool back and forth until I was down to the bottom of the shock. I did that once or twice and that portion was basically complete. I then went to work on the lower portion of the shock. I couldn't get all the rust off, but I'll tell you, I thought about replacing them before this "I wonder what this'll do" session. After that I used some run of the mill stainless steel polish on an old wool pad on my 10" auto polisher. I put the buffer on the ground and held it in place with my foot and ran the entire shock over the pad with both hands (btw, don't let go, I got lucky to find the one bolt that went to the other side of the garage) and then ran a terry cloth over the shock to remove the polish. Worked like a charm if I do say so myself. I guess a bench grinder with a polishing wheel would work just as well, but I've gotta work with what I have. All told, the two shocks took about 30 couple mins apiece and cost approximately $3 to get like this...mostly because I had all the materials.