How to tell the difference between aluminum, stainless and chrome.

[Music] what's going on everybody thanks again for tuning into our youtube channel really appreciate you guys stopping by this video here is trying to break down the difference in aluminum stainless and roll [Music] all right so I get this question a lot everybody's always asking me what's the difference between aluminum stainless and chrome how do I tell which ones which honestly I don't know how to explain this I'm gonna try in this video but every time somebody asks I'm terrible I mean terrible at answering this question but I hope you watch the video and I'm gonna try anyways aluminum aluminum I could just tell by looking at it aluminum is a softer metal usually like the wheels on your truck are aluminum especially if you're talking about a semi very few wheels on a semi are chrome you can get chrome wheels on a semi you're not going to find stainless steel wheels on a semi it's fairly rare I think I've maybe seen one set in my entire career and I've been doing this 20 years stainless steel wheels just don't happen there'd be stupid heavy nobody'd really want them years back there used to be steel wheels a lot of people still run painted steel wheels so that's a possibility but aluminum just even looks completely different it's usually dinged and ended up you can get that on stainless as well but stainless is a whole lot harder so like when you look at a bumper most bumpers are not aluminum most bumpers are either made out of stainless steel or chrome plated steel and you can also get chrome plated stainless steel but most bumpers are not aluminum unless you're buying an older bumper from older trucks or you're buying a cheap bumper most really cheap bumpers are made out of aluminum most more expensive bumpers are made out of either stainless steel or chrome plated steel chrome is a plating process so it's just a coating that's on something whether it's steel or brass or nickel chrome is just a coating like this fire extinguisher here this specific one is just stainless steel most things that are stainless steel is you can buy stainless steel grills for Peterbilts but most Kenworth grills are either stainless steel or chrome-plated now this is the most difficult one I've seen a lot of people try and sand down their grills and wonder why they turn yellow when they buffed them it's because you sand it through the chrome and you're literally exposing the nickel plating that's underneath the chrome even though they sound like metal they might not be metal all that is is the chrome plating over the top that's up making it up here like it's metal chrome is a type of metal correct so telling the difference between stainless and chrome it's just visually honestly between aluminum stainless and chrome it's all visual until you go and polish it but polishing chrome with a buffer isn't the best idea most times chrome plating is very thin most cheaper places only chrome plate three times some of the nicer chrome plating czar seven times so if you only have a triple plated coating or single plated coat if you hit that with a buffer especially like an orange airway or a yellow airway not a white or a super soft you can take that coating off rather quickly and not know that you took it off it'll still be shiny because the nickel underneath it when you polish it will shine still like chrome but in a week when it starts getting wet and it starts getting washed or it starts drying out it'll start turning yellow or gold so be careful if you're going to polish a bumper make sure that it's actually stainless now I've had a lot of people tell me recently here well it can't be stainless because a magnet doesn't stick to it or a magnet does stick to it the old rules for stainless and chrome and steel and aluminum don't apply much anymore the current stainless that's in the market is fairly watered-down it's not like it you to be used to be able to tell a difference between aluminum and stainless by telling if it was magnetic stainless steel used to be magnetic because of the the stuff that was mixed in to make stainless steel but not anymore since we don't have a whole lot of welders in the industry anymore people found it was easier to just make everything direct bolt-on and by making it bolt on they didn't need welders anymore so they didn't need high quality stainless high quality stainless is all they needed for people that were gonna be welding stuff and if you were using a cheap stainless and you were trying to weld it it wasn't gonna weld very good well now that we don't have a whole lot of welders and everything's just direct bolt-on we don't need high quality stainless anymore was I think the mentality behind it so a lot of the new stainless --es aren't even magnetic and they're very difficult and a pain and pain to polish I absolutely hate polishing this new stainless because it just does not work out very well so we all know if you've watched previous videos that there's different processes for polishing aluminum and stainless on Chrome I never personally recommend anything more than hand polish so if you're working on Chrome you should only be hand polishing it with a chrome polish there's many different types of chrome polishes out there you guys all know my recommendations I sell them on my website go Shannon comm forward slash shop and get my shameless plug in there but you see all my recommendations there I don't sell anything that I don't personally recommend chrome it's just a plating process like I said if you go to buff it you could risk stripping it off which is why if you hit it with an SOS pad or steel wool a lot of times a scratch is really easy cuz it's just a coating it's just like running an SOS pad or steel wool across your paint when running across your paint wood you know these are gonna take bugs off sure but you also run the risk of scratching it and stainless once you scratched it buffing it out isn't an easy process and like I said you risk stripping that chrome off if you buff it it's just all there is to it there's no ifs ands or buts about it you do run that risk anytime you buff chrome now somebody told me the other day they're like well I talked to my chrome shop they buff Chrome all the time yes they're buffing it before they do the plating process and once they do the plating process most of these chrome shops I've been to are simply hand polishing or wiping it down when they're done just to get off some excess residues they're not physically buffing their chrome once it's done once it's done it's done it gets shipped out after it's inspected and it's golden as long as the chrome plating process laid down smooth they're shipping it out straight from that most of them are not buffing the actual chrome plating so aluminum this keg here it's a whole keg they do also make stainless kegs but this one here is an aluminum one I could tell because of how soft it was and how it sounds a stainless one is real pingy an aluminum one is real tingey pinging and tingey that's a German thing I get that from my dad we got issues nonetheless I hope this helps I hope you guys can try to discern a little bit the difference between aluminum stainless and chrome it's the aluminum it's a stainless that's chrome break it down one more time for you most wheels on trucks are either aluminum or steel if they're painted they're steel not many people paint over aluminum if you do stop doing that it's a pain for me to take off later now if they're bare they could also have a clear coat on them that could be dura bride or a cue shield they could have a clear coat over those wheels but that's a completely different story we make a video for that as well how to strip that off and how to polish it back out most tanks on trucks are aluminum if you get some Canadian trucks they make some stainless steel tanks up there there are also companies down here that make stainless raps for fuel tanks so fuel tanks are either aluminum or stainless I think I've seen maybe a handful of chrome fuel tanks in my life and a lot of those are on older trucks like 359 some older man it's pretty rare air cleaners on trucks I've never once seen an aluminum air cleaner that wasn't painted some of the older 350 9s have painted ones most of those are steel if they're painted very few of more polish or polish Abul aluminum but 99 out of the I'd probably say nine thousand out of nine thousand and one air cleaners I've seen in my life our stainless steel grills are the majority of those are aluminum if you're talking about a Peterbilt very few of those are stainless or chrome but you do need to be careful some of those grills that are in Peterbilts that look like they're stainless sometimes they're chrome if you wander ask the owner the owner nine times out of ten will know if that grill is a stainless or chrome chrome grilles are quite a bit more expensive than the stainless ones and the customer will usually know because they've replaced it themselves you don't want to try and buffer chrome grill it just would not end well for you ken worse those are almost always stainless or chrome I've been very rarely seen an aluminum grill on a Kenworth unless we're talking old a models and even then it's usually just the emblem in the center that's aluminum what else do we got mirrors mirrors are almost always stainless or chrome diamond plate boxes I've still yet to see any stainless steel diamond plate boxes all diamond plate to me that I've seen personally has been aluminum so if you've got a question about aluminum stainless or chrome and you don't know what it is send me a picture I'll try and help break it down of course you guys can find my contact info on all of my channels not just here on YouTube but on Instagram and Facebook I have my personal cell phone number attached to all of those so you can physically get ahold of me anytime you need to and I try to get back to everybody in a pretty timely I'm sorry this video got a little long I know a bunch of my videos have gotten a little long and I'm long-winded and repeat myself a lot but I get these questions a lot the reason why I repeat them a lot is because I want people to remember answering everybody's questions some days I get 50 to 100 questions in a day and I'm trying to help make these videos as thorough as I can to try and cut down on some of those it's very very difficult to keep up with everybody sometimes so appreciate you guys watching these videos click that subscribe button down below and of course everything you need to find you can find on go Shannon comm /op thank you have a great day [Music]

Channel: Evan Steger

Views: 19,236

Keywords: evans detailing and polishing, evan steger, polishing aluminum wheels, how to polish aluminum, how to poish stainless, how to polish chrome, how to polish aluminum wheels, wheel polishing, aluminum polishing, how to polish a fuel tank, polishing aluminum, polishing chrome, polishing stainless, metal polishing, how to polish metal, big rig videos, truck detailing, zephyr polish

Id: D64Fg4dLNL0

Length: 12min 21sec (741 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 27 2019