I am having a seriously difficult and mind numbing time trying to sand the casting off the 7 grooves or grids on the top of the plenum.

How did you all do it?

 

I am about to polish my plenum also, and I thought about this last night, what the heck can you use to sand in between the 7 grooves???

 

Go across the top surface with a block. You could wrap the sandpaper around a small piece of 2x4 and staplegun it on the sides for a cheap homemade block. I just kept going at it like that for a long time. It took a long time because the side grooves were a little higher than the central grooves. This also makes for a better polish than doing one at a time because you get one flat even plane rather than 7 slightly different and barely curved ones.

As for getting down inside the grooves? I don't know. I just painted them. After a few coats it evened out so you couldn't see the grain anymore. If you really really want to polish them, you're going to have to invest in some small sanding tapers and mini-buffs.

 

hmm painting isn't a bad idea. do you have any pics of your setup?

 

I like the painting idea. I will give it a rough sand to get most of the grain off cause that isn't hard, then I think I'll throw some gloss black in there.

 

 

:hail: sweet....

I hope I can gte my plenum to look that good, how many hours time does that take, and is it good to try and get an extra plenum incase you mess up?

 

oh! and how do ya get the runners so shiny???

 

I had about 12 hours of work total. And I skipped a lot compared to some guys. Like I didn't polish the underside and the area of the plenum that the distributor cover attaches over because you'll never see either of those places. In that picture it's only about 8 hours into the project. I just did a test fit to see how everything was starting to look.

The runners, all I did was hit them with some 00 steel wool and Mother's Aluminum and Mag Polish.

I wouldn't worry about getting an extra plenum. I did my practice runs on the thermostat housing to get the hang of the process.

 

Cool thanks, so 00 steel wool eh, did you use any cleaning agents besides the mags, or did ya use the mags WHILE you were scrubing them witht he steel wool??

 

Scrubbed with dry steel wool, then went over with the polish.

 

ok thanks

 

What sand paper did you go to on the plenum, and did you wet sand?

Also, did you sand the grain off the flanges of the runners at all? Looks very smooth. I like.

I've skipped alot myself. The rear sides and underside. I didn't touch the under side, and the sides i just did a half *** job because you can barely see it, i'm on a time pintch, and I HATE sanding hard parts like that.

 

Well, I went all the way up to 2000 wet, then Aluminum Polish the first time. But I wasn't happy with the results and got the buffing wheels and compounds and went over all of it with those and was much happier. But the manual that came with it says aluminum "should have a surface as smooth or smoother than what a 220 grit abrasive would yield". I would personally go to at least 400 if not 600 just because it seems easier (taking their "or smoother" approach).

I polished the visible parts of the upper runner flange. I just smoothed and shined the rest.