guys,

the factory service manual says to use extra fine emery paper for cleaning the end plates. I couldnt find any. Will 1500 grade wet and dry paper do to clean up the faces a bit before bolting the engine together?

 

bump!

 

a random orbit sander with some 400-600 grit works nice. leaves itty bitty pockets for oil.
don't hog it out, just buzz them.

 

i wouldnt use 400-600 on the chromium plating end plates,,, i wouldnt go no less than 1200 ( i presume your just wanting to clean up the marks and crap),,, 1200 wet should be fine,,,dont go crazy though and rub them down for hours after all your wearing down the protective plating

 

The end plates are nitrided not chrome plated; only the rotor housings. The coating is only a few thousandths thick, so more than likely it has already worn off in the wear areas on high mileage plates.

I do agree that 400-600 is too rough. 1000 grit should be fine. I would do all by hand... 800 to get an even surface and then use the 1000 to finish it off. When I had mine resurfaced, the surface was very smooth but rough enough to allow oil to get into the pores as GUITARJUNKIE28 stated.

 

my bud had some irons lapped at mazdatrix, and they told him to buzz them with 500-grit paper before assembly. i've been using 400 and 600 for a while now with no ill effects.
it helps if you hose the plates off with wd40 first.

i think if you're gonna use 1000+ grit, why bother?

 

Well when I got the plates back from getting lapped at Racing Beat, the surface was a lot smoother than compared to what a 500 grit paper does to a metal surface.

 

did they tell you to go over it with anything, or use it how it was?

 

Yep, I had my side housings lapped by Mazdatrix as well. I believe they want you to use a more coarse paper due to the process they use for lapping. For a non-lapped side housing, I'd probably go with 800-grit wet up with WD-40 or some parts cleaning solution.

 

They said they were ready as is just to make sure that I cleaned them as much as possible to remove the grit that was in all the pockets etc.

 

ok, then maybe racing beat's process is different than mazdatrix's?