well here is some shots of my polish work. did plenum runners and alt. took some practice and many hours but i am happy with the results. it has been back in the car for a while just needs a washing now.

 

maybe needs some waxing too. should of put the hood on.. oh well i can always hit it again with the white rouge

 

wow, that looks great! what did u use and how long did it take?

 

That looks awesome man, great job.

 

You got a real nice shine outta that, just should have polished it before ya took the pics

I like how you ground down those spots on the corners of the plenum, near the throttle body. Looks clean.

 

very nice! your hard work truely paid off :hail:

 

did you do any internal work to it or just polished the outside? Lokks really nice though. Nice job

 

very nice!

 

 

ok...

now how did you do it?

I've used a grinder, then sander, to make things shine... but.. i've never gotten a chrome look shine like that..

looks very good.

 

That is one beautiful engine, great job on hte polishing!
And those vavle covers look really nice; where'd you get em?

 

ya, that too, i love those covers. typically i don't like black and red in the engine compartment.. but that just looks darn good.

 

Looks Great! It is hard to believe what a bit of patience adn knowledge can do for your engine compartment. Here is my TB & Plenum I did earlier this summer.


From this...



To this...

 

.....how....

 

Do a search for 'polishing plenum' and you will find tons of stuff. The user MikeInAZ is one of the best polishers on the board IMO. There are many different methods but I have found that the best that most people use is to sand starting at 180 grit, then 220, 320 wet, 400 wet, then polishing compounds on buffing wheels. You can also try a search under my user name for 'plenum'.

 

josh ur new sig is awesome. i actually did understand it all with out any difficulty. awesome job ont eh polishing man. takes great patience but u also get great results:hail:

 

i used the dry method, posted in the tech articles. 80/180/280 got everything from eastwood company. white rouge and some other products two step buffing used two diffrent styl buffs on my bench grinder. i used a expander wheel on a bench grinder for all the heavy grinding of the mold marks and rough finish. all the close in work i did with a mouse style sander. i also used the cone style sanding from eastwood on my dremel tool. the plenum is easy the runners took some real time. curves suck.

the covers are from summit. i liked the look but it has no oil fill. so the breather element on the right side will be the fill. i do have to strip out the air pump and it will look much better.

thanks for all the great comments

 

You can also pick up the aluminum plenum extension to cover the distributor too. It looks a lot cleaner IMO if your distributor is covered. Not a bad investment for like $30 with new screws. Here is mine in the process...

 

yep i still need to go to gm and order one up once i find the part numbers again, you know you need diffrent screws too. corvette extension, seen em on ebay too. often for more than gm charges

Next project is to take the tb off and do it again and right this time i got lazy and quickly sanded and polished so it shows i cut corners on it. Love the red tb cover i may just need to borrow that idea. But i will match it to my paint color of the body when i do that this winter.

 

I have the part numbers here at my site:

http://www.geocities.com/vipervenemgts/odds_ends

 

That looks really great.

 

heres mine:

 

My runners are almost finished, only the last polishing left. Then i will turn my attention to the plenum.

 

Heres a set of runners that I did for a customer last friday.

 

You didn't say long tube did you?

Mine...





Polished and powdercoated. It was pretty rough to start with.

-Schultzy

 

:hail: :hail: :hail:

That's all I gotta say. Your work inspires me to get better and better with each peice I do. Here's and Intake I just finished today-

 

sweet nice job looks great, next time grind the taps on the front and it will give even a smoother look.

 

i'm planning on using one of those electric hand sanders, but how do i get into all the groves on the top of the plenum. do i have to do those by hand i guess? and also do you need different sandpaper for metal? or is it the same stuff as you use for sanding wood?

 

Does that cover that goes over the distributor come chome, or do you have to do that?

Also, you can get that shine out of that aluminum stock TPI plenum? Mines all black speckly and gross... sure would be a project!

One last thing, you siad you did a set for a customer, how much does that run? I think I should leave this one to the pros!

 

Has anyone had any experience with cecoatings.com? Theres looks really good, and I wondered how it compared to polished.

 

I am He..lol.

I will no longer do Mirror Silver or Almost chrome right now. Reason Being if someone or something happens to it and you try and clean it up wrong. It will pull the silver finish off.(both actually have metal flake that when baked gets pulled ot the surface for that Chrome look) well when you goto clean it off and use the wrong product it pulls that finish off. leaving you with a Dull silver or black spot. I back all my work 110% and I dont want to deal with any problems with these 2 colors.

You can shoot a clear coat over en both but It dulls the finish. I am looking to get a sample of a new powder thats the same. but already has the clear agent in it. So well see in time if I offer the Mirror Silver/Almost Chrome look..

but I'll be the 1st to admit. Anyone who has e-mailed me about it. I tell them what I said here and I send them mikes way for polishing.

Nothing wil beat a Polished look. Unless you go all out chrome.

That being said.. Back to the main topic Polished Plenums.

Shultzy89GTA,

Gota love the red MR and polished accents. Ive done 1red,1yellow and have 1 more to do in red this weekend

 

this makes me bored of my carbed engine, anyway nice work everyone.

 

No. The original distributor cover is plastic. You have to go to GM and order p/n 10108425. You will also have to order the 3 screws which go with it, as the old screws will not work. Each screw is p/n 14082425. Once you get it, then you have to polish.

And yes, you can get that shine from the stock plenum. Like I said in my above post, do a search in this board, with my username and the word "polish" or "plenum" and you will find a lot of stuff as I have taken part in many polishing threads.

-Josh