Aluminum truck cap

[hotshoe]

I have a custom aluiminum truck cap. It was finished with a deco wheel which gives it a swirl finish. It was not sealed and has since oxidized badly. I have tried all the products at the auto parts stores an none have helped much.The material is quite thick and sturdy. What I would like to do is finish the entire cap to a mirror finish. What do you all recomend as far as compounds and buffing tools? What speed should the buffer run at and what types of pads should I be using? Can I seal the aluminum with something like Zoop Seal to stop the oxidation. Is there a better sealer? There are no deep scratches in the aluinum just the light swirls. Please help!

[thesound]

Your best bet would be to see if you can figure out what grade of sand that deco wheel was that was used to sand the cap down in the first place. If it was a grit higher than 600, you're gonna have problems if you try and start off with a sisal wheel and black compound because the scratches will be so fine the black compound will just end up getting trapped in them and you'll end up with an ever bigger mess than you started with. My suggestion is to get a few different grades of sandpaper, (you can guess for yourself on this), that are close to the grit that the deco wheel left, and determine which grade of sandpaper would be a step down from the deco sandings. So let's say you determined that the deco wheel left a 360 grit swirl polish, you'd wanna start off with a 400 grit paper and then maybe briefly move to a 500 grit wetsand before you started with the emery compound and sisal wheel. Either way, you wanna end up with a sandpaper grit over the entire surface of the cap between the range of 400 to 600 grit BEFORE you start with any of the polishing compounds. Hope that helps a bit.