POLISHED plenum/valve cover pics!!!......56K beware

[TeeJay3800]

The result of many hours of elbow grease, tons of sandpaper, and loads of polish:







What do you guys think?

[StudlyCamaro]

why did you use elbow grease... that stuff is obsolete, you should just used a polisher, its much easier :-p , looks good though

[bud36light]

reason it took so much elbow grease is you forgot to use a little spit. Looks great tho.

[dykz34]

You should get some high temp flat black spray paint and paint your coolant bottle. That mustard yellow color is FUGLY! Otherwise, good job on the bling bling.

[bmlawson]

that's pretty nice. good job!

[vsop4me3.1]

looks good, you might want to consider dykz34's Idea

[geoffinbc]

Looks good. I see you have Fel-pro valve cover gaskets

[v6h.o.]

Looks great!

[TheProfessor]

ah the old W body coolant resivoir lol
nice job on the uim though

[TeeJay3800]

Looks good. I see you have Fel-pro valve cover gaskets

LOL, yes. Don't you love the hideous blue color?

[ez112]

That just looks AWESOME!

Was the polishing all done by hand? What polisher compound did you use? Sand grit??

[TeeJay3800]

Basically, you just use a sanding block starting with real coarse grit sandpaper. I started with 80 and worked my way up to 180, 220, 320, 1500, and finally 2000. Be careful when sanding the 3.1 MPFI lettering as the sandpaper will tend to snag there if you don't keep the sanding block level. Once you get over 300 grit, switch to wet-dry paper you can wet-sand. Makes it much easier.

After you're done, using a rubbing compound or a polish designed for bare metal will really bring out the shine (a protective coating it necessary to keep the metal from tarnishing or oxidizing).

This takes a LOT of sanding to get that mirror finish with no fine scratches (took me about 6-7 hrs total). Some people say use a power sander or buffer, but I think you always get nicer results on a small surface like this by doing it by hand. Also, you'll have to remove the valve cover to polish that.