Stainless Steel and that elusive shine......

[Linegeist]

Dunno if you guys know this, but stainless steel (as on the exhaust cans) is actually an alloy. Like its cousin Aluminium, surface damage can be polished out and the metal returned to a chrome-like glitter with remarkably little effort - if you know how. I used to do this stuff when I worked in the motor trade.

When I got my Skorpion, the rear can was pretty ratty - the thing was well blued, the joint had been leaking for several hundred years and the bike had been dragged along behind a horse by the looks of the deep scratches along the side. The potential cost of a nice new unit gave the missus a dose of the screaming jeebies in the kitchen (not a pretty sight I'll have you know) so, with nothing to lose, I set to with some decent quality Wet 'n Dry (forget Halfords- crap) and soap, along with some Solvol Autosol.

I started off by hand-burnishing out the scratches with 400 grade on a rubber pad (20 minutes) then smoothed off the resulting smooth-but-rough patches with 600 (10 minutes), finally finishing off all over with 1200 and soap (half an hour). This left me with a matt silver, un-blued, leakage-mark and scratch-free can (plus aching fingers - but a smug grin).

The Solvol Autosol (nothing else I've found will do) and a brisk 15 minute buff on the bench with a piece of Terry Towelling saw the stainless start to glow encouragingly .... see pics here-

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A further 15 minutes the following day and I now have a seriously new-looking can that's the equal to the wife's new ER5.

HTH

[TS2Fifty]

Nice, but if you're of the lazy persuasion (I am! ) you may wish to eliminate the sore fingers bit, you can do this by using the sanding & polishing arbor attachments from Halfrauds (probably better available but I find these OK, they're next to the motorbike oils/chav trinkets in my local branch). I've been going a bit overboard with this kit of late, I'm going to end up with an entire TS250 engine mirror polished soon!

Autosol is most definitely the stuff to use & works instantly with the polishing wheel although I'm currently experimenting with cheap toothpaste & this seems to work OK too (certainly makes you wonder about the wisdom**of using it on your teeth twice a day when you see what it does to oxidisation on metals, I can tell you! Not that I often bother to clean my teeth, that is.... )

I should mention that I am not using these attachments on a high speed drill but on an old model engine starter motor which, at a guess spins around 3000rpm, much faster would probably cause more problems than it solves. As per usual I can't get any pics uploaded cause my camera won't talk to the PC but I'll try and borrow one to get some shots of the "eye-candy engine" when it's all done, so you can see the results of hours of hard..... hours of hard sitting there pressing a switch actually, fag on in the other hand, but hey it works!



** No pun intended

[Sue]

Thanks for the tips (think I prefer the 2nd option haha) off to Halfords for one of them polishing thingys (thankfully get 20% discount, need to with their prices), and planning an afternoon of polishing the can

[iceman]

Toothpaste works wonders.
I have used it many times,last time i used it on my G/F car headlights plastic cover,when i was driving at night i couldn't see so the next day i saw they were cloudy took some toothpaste to them and they looked new again.

[TS2Fifty]

Toothpaste works wonders.
I have used it many times,last time i used it on my G/F car headlights plastic cover,when i was driving at night i couldn't see so the next day i saw they were cloudy took some toothpaste to them and they looked new again.

Which reminds me....

Another tip I learned for restoring cloudy perspex/plastic is to give it a rub with Brasso, Got that a couple of years back when I had a VW Caddy (Rabbit truck in America) with a perspex rear screen.

[Sue]

A friend of mine has just managed to make a plasitc screen clear again... with a hairdryer. Takes time and patience, but melts just the surface and all the scratches smooth over.... he wouldnt dare turn up the heat anymore with the worry of damaging it, but it does the job and can see through it now