Aluminum pitting

[wildting]

I am trying to polish the aluminum enigine covers on my motorcycle and they are pitted fairly bad. I have the black/sisal , the brown/spiral and the white/flannel wheels for my polisher. The three wheels will polish the covers to a great shine, but there are still some \'ghost pitts\' still visible in nondirect light. I have added some wet 400 sanding to start with, but this is extremely time consuming. Is there a trick that I am missing? or am I just not being patient enough?

[mcaswell]

Yes, it is time consuming. Some tips:
<ol>
<li>Use several grades of wet and dry paper. Start with the coursest and work your way to fine</li>
<li>You might also want to try some wet and dry sanding disks that could be mounted on a power tool</li>
</ol>

[wildting]

How corse would you reccomend? 320 or should I go the 400, 600 and then the polish wheels or do I add the 1000 in there too?

Thanks,
J.P.

[L98-Z]

wildting wrote:
How corse would you reccomend? 320 or should I go the 400, 600 and then the polish wheels or do I add the 1000 in there too?

Thanks,
J.P.

Wildting, I wouldn\'t mess with the 320. 400 should do it pretty good. just go over the pitting well. Without viewing it not really sure, but 400 should be able to do it.

[mtlplshr]

deep pits are tough to get out,i did an old set of mag wheels and ended up going clear to 80 grit wet paper to get them out,then worked my way up to 400 grit.i then used tripoli,then the green,and finished with the white rouge.took forever(about 10 hours per wheel)but i wanted them perfect,and you should see'em shine

[Satch]

Will Caswell's GREASELESS buffing COMPOUNDS do the trick? https://www.caswellplating.com/buffing.htm