Nothing like a good guide...totally support that idea. Must be the week for guides after the phtochopping one today too.

Your attention to detail is inspiring! Inspires me to try and produce some results that are even half as good.

Let us know how it's all done and we'll post up some pictures of our own!

thanks guys apreciate the good comments,
as for the guide idea ,its a good idea ,but if i wrote a guide for every thing i done id never actualy get to do any work!!!!

i was hoping the pics would be enuf for most to get the idea of whats going on,
but having said that if any one whats to know how to do something specific dont hesitate to ask ,

im going to be retrimming my door panels shortly and actualy making new panels so ill try and do a bit of a step by step,mite be helpful to someone who dosent know about interior trimming??????

any way heres a basic run down on how to polish stuf::::

aluimium is the best to polish ,it comes up very well,
steel is a little bit harder but you can still get it to shine if you do it right,

polishing is alot of work!!!!! so if you cant be bothered then your better of getting it chromed,

to start with lets choose a part to be polished lets say the thermostate housing,
now this is aluiminium so we can get it to shine like chrome!!! here are the basic steps to doing it :::::::

first clean the thing real good,get rid of all dirt grease crap etc

next i use a wire brush on a drill and go over the hole thing to clean up any rust or corrosion,

next the hard bit ,if you want it to look show room then you have to remove every nick grind mark scratch dent etc to do this
you can start with 80# grit sand paper and sand the hole thing every little bit of it ,you can use a sander or by hand ,i do both sand with a sander first then go over it by hand with the 80# again ,

next we do that hole process again with the following gades of paper:::::
180#
240#
320#
400#
all these grades are dry grades,the next you use warm water with
800#
1200#
1500#

as you can see each grade can take a long time and alot of hard rubbing and effort but if you go over each grade exactly the same as the last you should end up getting to 1500 # with nearly no scratches left at all just some very fine ones,

next is the fun part the polishing it self,
now you can get a polishing buff pad at bunnings for like 20 dollars that work very well,all you need is a little polishing compond,

i find its best to mount the item on some wood ,a sort of a jig if you like then you can mount the wood in the vice,so your hand are free to deal to it,

so your all mounted up you just wipe the compound on with a rag, get out your drill with buff pad attached and let it rip!!!!!!!
starting of slowly to work the compound in then speeding up the drill speed to all out full throttle and then you will see the shine coming out !!!!!!!

its a pretty good feeling after all that sand ing to see it shining up like chrome!!!! and it dosent cost you much ,just a bit of time hard work and a buff pad,

so there you go peoples have ago your self ,if i can do it im sure anyone on here can .....

oh ok mate, sorry for some reason i i was under the inpression you were doing the conversion, sorry about that. mate the job is looking fantastic, should be a show quality piece hey. cheers good luck with the project and im always looking through the thread.

Dare you to polish the whole gearbox

I know a guy who spent more than 200 hours doing the gearbox for his show hot rod. Keep the pictures coming.

gear box huh,ill give it a go if i can fit it in some where ,ill give it a partial polish mainly the parts that you can see

You mentioned before you will use 2 pak clear coat to seal all yr hard polishing work.... Does it matter what kind of clearcoat you use? Can we say just but a spray can of the stuff?

Nice guide too!

Quote:


i dont think it really maters so much what clear you use,im going to use 2 pak ppg clear because im a car painter and have acceses to that sort of stuf also the 2 pak has a high gloss of its own which helps,,also
its more important to clear metal parts,than aluminium,cause the alu holds the polish very well for a long time but metal can rust quickly ,especialy if you get water on it alot,hope that helps you thanks

ok well ive started my door trims so as promice going to do a little step by step as i go thru the process so here we go!!!

tools:::
drill
jigsaw
drill bits
spray glue
scissors
paint brushes
material
soft backing foam
etc



so heres the start :::

so you can either use the old trims or make new ones,im making new ones casue the old ones arnt that good so heres a shot of the old trim

so flip it over and you can see where the cover is attatched to the wood,here i use a razor blade and slice around the hole trim ,then you can just peel off the old cover,