I also ported it while it was off..

 

dang fbody.com

 

Looks nice!! Did you do it all by hand??

 

great job, are you going to buy a vette plenium ext. ?

 

ww-w-www-w-woooooow

 

How did you do the runners?? How did you polish your plenum?? I polished mine but it isnt quite as reflective as yours! but it looks sweet man :hail:

But please tell how you did the runners

 

holy cow!!!! that looks awesome. how would I get mine to look like as good as yours? so far all I have is a few small little dots that I have to sand down. How did you get it so shiny???
Here is mine.

 

iroc4ever,
I pretty much did it all the sanding by hand. that is why it took me so long.

88 350 tpi formula ,
Yes i am going to probably order it on monday.


Fbirdta878787,
the runners where too hard. but what i did was put them in a vise. and then get a long strip of sand paper, and put it around each runner and kinda pulled it back and forth like shining a shoe or something for 80 and 180 grit. then with 220 to 600 i just went back and forth longways and tried to kinda bend the sand paper to the shape of the runners.. for the flange i used a dremel tool with like 3 differen't sanding attachments. and i also used a mouse hand sander. if u have one of those there is a nice attachment that helps out alot.


Thirdgen86TA,
have fun getting those dots (pits) out, i still have quite a few of them. i am gonna have to go over it again another day. just don't use anything lower then 80 grit. i tried 40 grit and it was after that when those little dots showed up.


as far as getting it that shiney.. check out http://www.gmtips.com/3rd-degree/dox...m/pol-plen.htm you HAVE to buff with a buffing wheel if u want that super shiney look. there are a few more good buffing links at http://www.gmtips.com/3rd-degree/dox/tips/tips.htm READ THEM! you will not get that good of a shine without buffing. polish sucks, plus u dont' have to go any higher then 600 grit paper if u buff. compared to like 1500 if u use polish stuff...

if u have any more questions let me know

 

wow that does look bad ***......i just finished up my plenum extension....now..I have to do my plenum.....got any tips on how to polish them? did you use a buffer at all...or all by hand?

 

How much time did you invest to complete both the runners and the plenum? I was going to polish mine last week, but realized that I probably didn't have enough time.

 

......I'm going to redue mine to see if I can just a lil more of a shine.....

 

don't think anyone has done this yet....I just finished polishing my electronic cut out......looks pretty kewl...

 

.....

 

Just a Q, but why the cutout? BTW, is that a QTEC? If so, I could have gotten you a killer deal on it man, I'm a dealer for QTP stuff.

 

I polished it because anything that's aluminum on my car is polished...so..it guess it will match if you happen to look underneath.....lol..plus, that wasn't much going on last night..so I thought what the hell. I wish I would have know about the deal you could have gotten....it's not a Q-tec though....it's the McCord Power Plate II.....

 

Looks really good breathment! Looks like the whole engine bay has been detailed too. Later

 

Breathment---no A/c canister but all rest of A/C lines and pump, why dont you take it all out??

 

i am eventualy gonna put all the a\c stuff back together. i have a leaking headers gasket on that side that i wanna take care of soon before i put the a\c stuff back on. plus its winter so im not gonna worry about it for too long..

 

One question... What do you use to buff the plenum to get it that shiny and where do you get it?

 

Nasty Bird 90:

I got an 87 TPI Firebird w/ sotck manifolds and y-pipe. How much can you get me the QTEC cut out for? Those are about bad as ****. :hail:

 

looks good

 

i have a new ***... :hail:

i know how much work goes into this... looks like you need a new hood liner soon, or just rip it off

im on my second plenum and i can lend a couple tips...

dont go nuts with the sanding.. take the first initial layer of cast off.. anymore than that and you will get nothing but pits.. it seems there is a fine line when you take it down... my first one looks like *** but my second one is turning out really nice... i was porting the sides and i came up and nicked the top.. where i sanded that area to correct my mistake is a collection of pits now...

sanding by hand is by far the best way to do it... you get a better feel for the metal.. im a lazy bastard so i did it with my electic sander...

i wet sanded by hand from 280 up to 800 though... im going to clean all the carbon crap out of it and smooth all my porting efforts before i take it to the buffing wheel.. the before and after with polishing is amazing..thats where all the shine comes from...

did ya notice any performance gains?

:lala:

 

Does anyone know if I could get some of the pits out? My plenum is kind of shiny but not exactly like a mirror. If you place something above it you can see the reflection. I was just wondering if it was too late to get these pits out?

 

So what did you use with the buffing wheel?


Thanks

 

Me? I just sanded it and sanded it until I didn't see very many spots and then I used mothers aluminum polish. I had my plenum off before and decided to do this and I didn't think it was working halfway through so I put it back on and gave up. Then I realized that you had to go further so I did the rest of it while it was on the car.

 

hey, what were the stages u used to get that shine? im gunna go up to 600? i saw the tech article.. but i wana know how far you guys went.. .im at 180 right now.. and it looks awsome... wish i had some pics... it looks like thirdgens86TA's right now... i wana know how much farther should i go... it says 1500 grit and then alum. restorer? do i really need that? thanks guys

 

All you have to do is go from 180,320 wet, 400 wet, 600 wet then hit it with white rouge polish. Make sure u dont go down to far cause then u run into pits that just wont go away. That's what happened to me.

 

i have mothers alum. polish.. is thats the same as white rouge? i plan to go up to 600wet... so far im doing a good job.. need to get pics...

 

What is the plan for keeping the shine? So you clear coat it with high heat clear coat? I did the sanding thing with the runners and tried to use a dremel to polish it, but I can never get the shine to be consistant.

It does dull fast though. Thats why I was woundering about the clear coat.

FireChicken

 

Thanks for the topic and info. I did my intake and runners and they look AWESOME! I did not think the picture was real at first as I had polished my runners in the past. I have never seen polished aluminum look like that. Now my intake makes my Polished Throttle body cover look like crap!

I did not have alot of the tools mentioned so I did everything by hand with sanding and then I polished it up with neverdul. It still did not look good, but I have a standard size buffer for detailing the car so I took that to it and the chrome appeared like magic.

I found 3 things:

-I now have the smoothest hands in town
-You CANNOT do this job while crap is on the car
-And you have to be pretty crazy to go at those runners with a FULL SIZE Buffer!!!

Does anyone know about a smaller buffer that will not scratch these surfaces? I have an air gun with a buffing wheel but it is no where near as soft as my car buffer.

Good Luck for those doing this project. Total time for me was about 4-5 hours. WELL WORTH IT!! Cheapest quote I got to do what I did for $10 was $450.

Firechicken

PS. I did not go lighter then 1200 for the final stage. Even when I wetsand a car I do not go under 1200. Well, 1500 if it was painted 2 hours earlier or something like that. Most common is 1000

 

Polished uppers and runners look AWESOME! However, they do not disapate heat as well as an unpolished plenum/runners. Think of a heat-sink for a pentium processor.

 

Nice setup you got there. You did a great job.

I was curious if you or anyone had more tips. I've searched, and read tons already, but I still have some questions.

Did you use some sort of sanding block? Also, you mention that 80-grit is where you started, and then finished with 600 grit?

How much was dry, and how much was wet? Any grits inbetween those two numbers? What did you use to, "wet" the paper for 'wet' sanding? (that one always confuses me, if it's water, or oil or something...)

Does a drill really have enough power to run a buffing wheel?

Last, would a dremel be able to do any of this? or is it pretty much useless.

 

Hi newbie here I know this is an old post but I just polished my intake, runners, and plenum What is the plan for keeping the shine? So you clear coat it with high heat clear coat?

It does dull fast though. That's why I was wondering about the clear coat. Thanks

 

I never seemed to need a finisher. However, maybe someone will chime in here.

I do see this: http://www.por15.com/GLISTEN-PC_p_45.html it might work, depending on the reviews out on the internet...

 

I'll look into that thanks,Yeah mine hasn't dulled yet but I heard it will sooner or later mines a daily driver and I'm just wanting to make sure that beautiful shine doesn't lose it's luster!! LOL!!

 

You might want to look into a aluminum sealer like zoop or even clear pc.

 

i officially hate you!

just kidding looks great! do mine next lol

 

Has anyone ever used this stuff? The Reviews don't look promising either

http://www.eastwood.com/diamond-clear-gloss-set.html

 

You did a DAMN good job on that plenum pat yourself on the back. I do a lot of polishing, and know what goes into it.

A good polish job like that needs no sealer and will look good for a long long time trust me, leave it alone.


If you can do that by hand you oughta get yourself some good equiptment and make a go of it.

It makes life SO much easier, no hand tools sanding or anything. Youll spend some money for sure but its worth it. You can take the right attachment, say 220 up to 400 grit depending hit it once go straight to the buff, and done unless you need detail work.

On pits once you start seeing more stop it will just get worse, most older aluminum castings arent the best.
Sometimes the hardest part is knowing when to stop lol


Keep up the good work!

These guys will help you next round, tell you what you need depending on the part
tarheelparts.com not many out there will give info on how to polish right.

 

I think thats the stuff my dad used on his Monte Carlo rims after he got done polishing them up. it all just flaked off, he called Eastwood they basically told him he did it wrong, he tried it the way they suggested, still flaked off lol. now his rims are just bare polished lol