I just polished my 2nd distributor cover today, the more I do, the better they look. Just to let everyone know, I'll polish yours for you for a small fee if you don't feel like buying all the equipment. Here's a pic.

 

...and another

 

Looks mighty fine! if I didn't do mine already..you'd have a customer. sorry man....good luck!

 

very nice! I'd polish mine if I had a dist. cover!

 

Thanks for the compliments, and 84, yours looks great. I assume by the nice shine you got, you had to use some kind of polishing compound. I like the Tripoli from Eastwood.

 

My first polishing job ever. All done by hand. Tools are for sissies

 

I'm gettin close, still needs some work, bye the way does anyone notice something different about mine???

 

Honestly that doesnt look reall shiney. You have lots of scrathces in the aluminum and its kinda dull. What set up are you using? Heres some of my work with my porfessional equiptment.

 

Yes, you plated it with chrome or plated it yourself. Its reall easy to tell since you see shiney cast

 

D@mn dude, you rock. I would kill for them valve covers.

Nope

 

Bimma might want to watch his back now lol j/k. I'm hoping to soon have my poilshing shop built so I can get back to business again.

HMMM, is it powercoated?

 

Here is my story. I sent my stock distributer cover to work with a buddy of my dad's that works at an aluminum foundry. He made me an aluminum cover that was sand cast using my origonal. I noticed that the rear of the corvette cover was different than the camaro one I had made. The camaro one slopes down while the Corvette on just goes down at an angle, I found this interesting because i always figured they were the same.

The downside with the aluminum one I had made was full of porosity (air bubbles) and it was a beoch to get a smooth finish before I hit it with the brown tripoli and rouge so I am going to work with it some more.

I believe the finish looks different because it is a different alloy than what the GM parts. I am thinking yours are heat treated too. Did yours ball up (melt, act like putty) when you worked on them?

 

Thanks to all the TGO members, and fooling around with compounds and wheels, I have found the perfect buffing technique





When I was buffing mine, the more rouge or tripoli I put on the wheel, the more I got of that residue building up. It was bitch to get off, and Id end up scrubbing so hard Id put hairline scrathes on mine. Then 85SportCoupeto89RS told me to use laquor thinner. Oh man it worked wonders! I bearly had to whipe and it was gone. BUT if I had ALOT of that black stuff, even after then thinner, I had smuge marks I couldnt remove. I had to start over with tripoli to rouge. I always had that build up, and the thinner worked great. But there was a few times I think I used too much compound, which left those marks I couldnt get off, so Id have to start over.

 

Why not polish the distributor base too? :P Heres mine (the result of boredom on days too cold to work on my car)

 

my rim

 

Its called "gas" theres absolutely nothing you can do to get rid of it. What kind of aluminum did the foundry use? 613? While I was a polisher at S & P our foundry cast a whole crapload of parts that had gas in them. The bad thing was you still had to polish it out after it had all the machine work done to it so we wouldnt loose too much money. Its reall annoying because theres nothing you can do to get rid of it, your best bet would be to buff the crap out of it with the loose buffing wheel and get the best possible shine.

 

ok, thanks guys

 

You guys do great work. Are you using buffing wheels on those peices?? I do all my stuff by hand, and It doesn't look quite as good as some of those.

Maybe I just need to use a little more rouge and rubbing compound??

Here is my first intake ever..



I also did my A/C accumulator and my A/C lines... yes I know I was bored