Planet Minis

dayj1

I spent most of the day today polishing the aluminum parts for my 50. I'm getting closer to getting it back together. Anyway, the alloy used on these bikes polishes great and looks almost like chrome. What do you guys think?

/dayj1

C_Thut

looks amazing howd you get it that shiny?

nifty50

nice!!

reynolds_brad

Explain your polishing process if you dont mind. those look great.

dayj1

Well, it's not easy! My main hobby is restoring antique jukeboxes, so I have a lot of metal polishing equipment and supplies.

Basically you start by cleaning all of the old paint/grease of the part. Then you have to sand out all the pits and scratches. You actually start with coarse 80 grit paper and work up to about 400 grit for aluminum. By the time you get to 400 grit, you can use a power buffer with various grades of compound to polish it to a mirror shine. If you're trying to polish a harder metal like stainless steel, you have to work up to about 1000 grit paper before you can use the buffer.

You can see some buffing supplies at http://www.caswellplating.com to get an idea of the stuff you want to use. You COULD do it by hand, but you'd probably have to sand up to 1500-2000 grit before you could polish with a rag and some sort of metal polish.

The parts in the picture took me about 8 hours to complete.

Oh, and thanks for the compliment!

/dayj1

arlindsay1992

The polishing I do with the dremel add ons don't look any shinier. The difference was so small I never even mentioned it. But that looks amazing. Good job.

dayj1

One other thing to keep in mind is that not all aluminum alloys will polish to a high shine. While the Honda parts above polished nicely, I have found metals in the past that simply would not polish no matter how much work that I put into them.

I think an engine case polished up would look sweet but I don't want to disassemble my motor completely and it would be very awkward trying to hold the bottom end of a 50 up to the buffer for a couple of hours

/dayj1

mikep

It is. I gave up before mine were anywhere near that shiny, but i wsh I had persisted. those bits look amazing

xr1million

Thays just polished aluminum? Gorsh, it looks like chrome..... Real nice!

kane

those look amazing, did you use tripoli compound for the buffing?

coleuden

Im guessing its hard to keep that shiny though, correct?
Cole

dayj1

I started with black (emery compound), then brown (tripoli), then white (rouge), and finaly blue which is a rouge with no cutting action. But, yes, by far most of my time polishing is spent with the tripoli (brown) compound as it is the best to use on aluminum.

/dayj1

dayj1

Aluminum is fairly soft so if you get sand/mud on them, they will scratch. But if you mean tarnishing, I've never had it be a problem with aluminum. I still have parts for some of my jukeboxes that I polished over 5 years ago and they are just as shiny as the day that I buffed them. I also found that the alloy used by Honda is far better than most at not showing fingerprints. My bike will be used on the street only and a coat of wax on the shiny parts every couple of months or so is the only maintenance that I would expect.

/dayj1

1TrikZB

Beautiful work! Can I send you some parts?

symp

damn, 8 hours, with professional polishing equipment, forget that

1 hour would be too long for me ahah

FastMC

Nicely done.

davez

or you could spray them with clearcoat and not have to worry about tarnishing.

I use semichrome polish on my old ducai

stuntjester1

thats sick, good polish job.

eichkay

Thats just amazing ... i thought about polishing the spokes on my CT70 but then remembered how much of a pain it was to do my motor on my pitbike..

Well done thats for sure...