I am looking to polish my UIM and LIM... I was wondering what tools I would need to do it. I know that some places offer this as a service, but I was curious to know how to do it myself.

 

i use oven cleaner to clean up all unnecessary grease/ oil and use the polisher

 

"the polisher"?

 

he means dusting it, de-greasing it, cleaning it, polishing it off with you're own sand paper and then mounting it

 

really is that wat i meant? lol nooo jus got get oven cleaner and clean it then go to autozone and buy a bottle of polisher and polish it

 

alright, I wasn't sure if like a wire-wheel or something would possibly work.

 

Lol u makin it sound way to complicated

 

Cuz it is, when you don't know how...that includes me! A little more detail please, all who have done this...

Thanks!

 

Will the polish stuff get them "chrome looking"?

 

Ok ummm If want it to look chrome looking like as in like porting and polishing or like the whole intake. What I do is that i grind it down to the bare metal and it will look kinda shiny then you polish it I would use the chrome polish and helps gets rid of rust you can get it at any wal-mart really.

 

You could powder coat it silver.

 

I powder coated my LIM when I had to replace it. I did it myself with my powder coating stuff. I used High-temp silver and it looks like brand new cast alluminum. I've done the chrome on my thermostat cover and it looks pretty good, but it won't take as much heat.

That being said, If you really want info on polishing, check out eastwoods, they have whole sections on polishing, all the tools you could need.

 

Sanding it smooth is a good starting point, whether hand sanding or by using a high speed tool like a die grinder with a Scotchbrite disc. If you have a bench grinder, go to the Eastwood Company's website and order a couple of buffing wheels and polishing compounds. They are fairly cheap and you can make most any metal or plastic shine like a mammajamma!

I buffed my turbo compressor housing and manifold ports with their products and it looks like chrome.

Here are a few pics of the buffing tools from Eastwood:



And a few pics of what I polished:

 

not only do you need all those. but you also need to sand off the texture of the surface of the uim.
y ou start off with a very cource (low number) sand paper. then increase all the way to even 2000 grit and sand it with water .

 

Eastwood also carries small sanding "rolls" and "tapers" that can be chucked in a die grinder to help with the initial prep. Great for small crevices. I used them as the first step when I polished my manifold ports, followed by the cotton buffs and compound.

Here's the link:

http://www.eastwoodco.com/jump.jsp?i...33&iSubCat=436

 

The trick to a successful polish job (on anything) is consistency/uniformity of finish.
To achieve this do the hard parts first then bring the rest of the piece to that level.

If you do the easy areas first and then can't bring the crevices/recesses to the same shine it just looks like you got lazy and didn't finish.

Also- and this is admittedly a matter of personal taste- a little sprinkle of polished parts goes a long way. Not only are large polished pieces a bitch to keep shiny but the contrast between paint/beadblasted/whatever parts with some polished accents looks more dramatic than huge swathes of chrome like polishing.

Furthermore, once you start polishing one part you're pretty much committed to bringing all the surrounding parts to an equal level of cleanliness/detail, otherwise your work will stick out like a sore thumb.

/opinion

 

this is NOT as easy as it sounds.
well, its not hard...its just time consuming!!

 

get 200 grit ,300grit 400grit 600grit 1000grit , polishing compound, a bucket with water and rags

then all u have to do is take one part off at a time and go from low grit to high with water

 

With anything this time-consuming, you just increase the rate of beer consumption exponentially. It's the Golden Rule of RX7 ownership.

 

yes sir , many long nights sanding but after the 3rd beer you dont feel the sores on ur fingers and u just sand away till u run out of beer

 

just sandblast it and powdercoat it.

 

+1

(pardon the dust)