Valve cover polishing-time and effort

[grommit]

Hello guys, i have been off the forum for a few weeks due to work,but now its time to get cracking b4 Christmas hits us all.
a lot of questions have been asked about polishing valve covers,there is a lot of help in this forum, so if you stick to the basics and make sure you get the previous grit out then you will succeed.the big problem i find with some of the people i know, it takes them hours and hours of sanding to get to a certasin stage, they then get frustrated and try and skip the next steps only to go back and re-do the errors they ave done.if it takes a long time to do something it is worth it to stick to all the different steos to the end.this BMW valve cover has took me months due to being away with work.FROM THIS

TO THIS


so for all you guys starting off, make a plan and stick to it, for all the tight places there are a lot of tools and tips out there, i followed the procedures that numerous guys have posted on this forum and things have come out perfect.
good luck and Merry Christmas.
grommit
UK

[mpierich]

Originally Posted by grommit

Hello guys, i have been off the forum for a few weeks due to work,but now its time to get cracking b4 Christmas hits us all.
a lot of questions have been asked about polishing valve covers,there is a lot of help in this forum, so if you stick to the basics and make sure you get the previous grit out then you will succeed.the big problem i find with some of the people i know, it takes them hours and hours of sanding to get to a certasin stage, they then get frustrated and try and skip the next steps only to go back and re-do the errors they ave done.if it takes a long time to do something it is worth it to stick to all the different steos to the end.this BMW valve cover has took me months due to being away with work.FROM THIS


so for all you guys starting off, make a plan and stick to it, for all the tight places there are a lot of tools and tips out there, i followed the procedures that numerous guys have posted on this forum and things have come out perfect.
good luck and Merry Christmas.
grommit
UK

Good on you, grommit. Merry Christmas.

[baz]

nice job grommit.
what happened with the oven , i lost track of the post ,did you get to finnish it yet ?

[grommit]

Hello Guys,thanks for the kind words.the oven is still in the garage, the welders giloutine broke so fingers x'd i will get the sheet cut this week.i tell you i can't wait to get powder coating,it's been a few months slog, but the light is at the end of the tunnel.i have 5 full sets of Alloy wheels stored in the garage, the latest set off an Audi TT with 1 or 2 curb rash, worth a few hundred £'s, bought for £40, i am hoping to get a pic took as i am in 2 minds to polish or PC, hopefully you guys will let me know what you think.
catchya all soon.
Brian
UK

[Tng21]

nice one mate, m30 rocker cover

i do the m20 ones and have got from this



to this

[grommit]

hello guys,
tng21 do you think the time and effort is worth for what you charge? the last one i doen the guy thought he'd pay buttons, he tipped up with his alloys air box,rocker cover, and when i said the rocker cover would take some man hours his face turned into a 'smacked backside'.infact your original post on ya rocker cover give me the boost i needed to carry on with it, i didn't realise back then you were only a few mile away from me lol.
catchya soon
Brian

[Tng21]

well that particular rocker took me ages as it was all done by hand sanding pretty much so i wouldnt have a clue how long it too me to behonest.

Now i have greaseless i wana see if i can do it double quick time but im also going to be looking into other methods of getting the first stage of sanding done the quickest, thats the key for me, getting them from rough surface to a clean smooth 120 grit in double quick time, the rest of the grits will flow over quite quickly after that.

Not too worried on the rocker front, its the inlet manifolds thats gonna take me my time.

Im looking to do Afm's in 3 hours ( which i can already )
getting the BMW covers down to 4 hours
and hopefully working out a technique that i can get inlets done in 8 hours

if i can get to those times then yeah it will be worth it, for me anyway.

Here the inlet ive started on (in 2nd post, not yet finished though) and the afm that ive done

[Tng21]

still need to find better wayd for gettin the inlets done though, although it looks quite good from what i started with, it still need a lot more work and its very hard with the tools i have so far

[grommit]

i bought a tiny adaptor head for the dremel ages ago that takes sticky sanding pads, the head is semi flexible but the only thing i found is the discs flew off after a while, but boy are they good really got my time down, i have a 2" air circular sander that is really the dogs bollox, velcro pads and you can really start with the heavy grit first, these cut my time down by multiple hours, so i can look for the links and when we meet up we can talk about the discs for the dremel adaptor it made light work of all angles, defo had to wear BA using this.
tell you what pal you have done top work on the parts, the inlets are always a pain. take my hat off to you.
catch you soon
Brian

[Tng21]

im going down to the range this morning to see about an angle grinder with some 120 discs to see if i can blitz the roughness off the covers with one of them to see if thats gonna cut my prep time down a bit. greaseless is all well and good but is very time consuming and at £7 a tube quite expensive to work with too.

so if i can blitz em with a angle grinder 1st, then work it with greaseless afterwards, might help out