Polishing Aluminum Step Zero & One

if you ever see a car with a polished aluminum engine in person then there's likely someone nearby who spent hundreds of hours to make it do that to your eyeballs for that fleeting moment where you've got to walk up and appreciate it it's a labor of love some would say that it's insanity well both are correct remember those who built seaplanes out of wood discovered the theory of relativity or broke the sound barrier were completely nuts too and these events would never have occurred if they weren't crazy enough to ruin every other aspect of their financial and social lives to have accomplished anything quite as nerdy as that my point is a car won't ever end up polished unless it's owner is crazy enough to do it it's a self-sacrificial effort because this is not actually something that the car owner does for themselves it's only something that's done for the sake of other people who will see it there's no other reason for it so tell that guy thank you why am i showing you examples of de tomaso panteras while i explain this well it's because i grew up with one and hung around these people i was smitten by the modified customized mid-engine v8 five-speed crowd all my life and the pantera owners were the ones famous for outrageous over-the-top engine bays back in the 80s and 90s that was where i first got my feet wet seeing and appreciating it the cars were from the 70s but the longer a pantera sits around the more likely it is to end up like this it was 1997 before i saw my first polished four banger it was at a dsm event and it seemed to me at the time the only people crazy enough to do this to a non-italian import or the dsm crowd i had the process about halfway figured out when the ds ember who actually had a galant vr4 thank you sam pulled me aside and let me know what i was doing wrong a true gentleman for me it's always been the dsmers who are eager to pour out everything they know and to help a brother out it was actually three years later in 2000 before i bought my gsx and it didn't take me very long before i had ventured down that path of polishing something that i could afford and something you could put as big of an adrenaline rush in my veins as that pantera did my first king of bling victory was 2004 and i repeated it again in 2005 and 2006. while this job isn't for everyone i've decided to compile the work that i had to do to win a small pile of dusty trophies at a car show well over a decade ago and i did it against some truly incredible competition that one right there that's my pride and joy polishing aluminum is just one of the things that i do best and i've never shown how to take a bare cast aluminum part to this level before i've only re-polished what i already had done that's what you've seen i obviously did the first polished job when the whole world was using potato cams this series is not about making your polishing job any faster or easier on yourself it's about the quality of the final outcome so if you're looking for the easier softer way to do this this is not your video this video is how to achieve show quality trophy winning results in fact doing this job correctly actually begins with dozens of other procedures that don't involve polishing anything at all there's so much more to this than just making a thing shiny all of this is easily explained and i'm going to do it here but if you know that your part's good already and you're just here for the polishing then you can skip to 11 or 12 minutes in and all you'll miss is the first 12 hours of work and a new project announcement here we go i did not want to announce this build over a box of diapers with my [Music] no maybe maybe oh that's nasty is it indeed yes there's a screw holes for the cam sensor has it been milled recessed recessed hey it has not been milled looks like i might have a factory deck ah the inside of this box is just gross there are cams in it so some of the valves should be open there's two of them that are i'll be surprised if they're not bent because this box oh my goodness it's mangled yep you know what this one's in for and it's complete it's got everything in it including the spark plugs really so uh complete 2g cylinder head this actually puts back together the last piece that i had modified to fit a 6 bolt for the gsx's glyptol build my other blocks already powder coated i spun rod bearings so all i need is a crank and a rotating assembly i can put that sucker right back to use pistons are a little scored up and mangled just slightly you know a couple scratches from bearing chunks that got thrown around in there probably only a few thousands would take it out and i could probably make it fit with the 20 000 custom piston i don't know i'll measure and see what we get but um have a complete seven bolt if i'm right i see the oil galleries don't go all the way through the head so this one would be a g6 s not a k this would be a late 2ga production it is a g6s so just like the one i've already got oh the one up the other one i've got is off of a 97 but this one has the provisions for the cam angle sensor already on it so i don't have to do any machining yay i'm excited it actually looks like it's in pretty good shape doesn't look destroyed i don't see anything broken everything's bolted down tight doesn't look like anybody even popped the cam bolts or anything so this will be a lot of fun we'll do it in the ultrasonic cleaner and do all the other stuff i don't know if i need to make another video about any of that stuff anytime soon but um yeah uh this isn't the cylinder head channel after all i know it feels like it's the cylinder head channel but over half the parts of every engine are in the cylinder head so you really can't avoid it i currently have four cars that are powered by a ford g63 and what i was babbling about assumed that you already knew that i'm now building a fifth engine for those four project cars essentially it's a backup engine for my gsx and its interchangeability hinges on having provisions for this one particular camagle sensor i wanted the same g6k casting that i had on my gsx just like the early production 95 unit that it came with but i found this revised g6s unit from a 1996 production car and decided to take a chance both the 95 and 96 model year cars used the same cam angle sensor and this will all make sense soon that unboxing that you just watched was the result of a five month search not for the first solution but for the right solution for pushing every single one of these projects forward my original seven bolt head was thrice machined ported externally polished and then i modified it to fit a six bolt block technically it could still fit on top of either block just fine it's just that it's exhaust ports they were gasket matched which in many cases can be a mistake it changes my options regarding other parts that i had already purchased parts that you haven't seen yet many whose debuts have been delayed for years because of machining difficulties i've been experiencing i owe it to those parts and their manufacturers the car and all of you watching to provide a better example so i'm putting my original seven bolt humpty dumpty block back together again i'm not abandoning the six bolt build at all i'm encountering machining difficulties everywhere i go and all of these are gonna need it each reason that i've encountered has been unique and the way i see it whichever engine gets built first is going back into that car so what you're seeing unfold in front of you right now is me reviewing the possible candidate to set it all in motion if this cylinder head checks out okay it will enable me to move forward on a fifth engine build and the outcome will leave me with a backup engine one that because of this head casting selection allows me to make a six bolt plug and play in every single one of them in my driveway i'm going to build the daylights out of both of these things it opens up a host of new opportunities for me if it looks a lot like the same thing that you've seen me doing recently to the galant it's because that all of this exact same stuff basically is the stuff i had to do to the client the good news is that i don't have to explain any of what i'm doing in this video in the same level of detail and it's going by 12 times faster we're gonna be done with all of this in like five minutes with the cams out the cam journals are in immaculate condition the lifters being hard to remove is actually not a problem to me at all it's better for your oil pressure if they're hard to remove but not one single scratch groove piece of grit any apparent wear or anything to complain about on any single one of these cam journals they pass the fingernail test in flying colors i'm going to break the rest of this thing down and inspect it after it's all clean i don't need the cams the springs or the valves for where i'm going so they've all got to go one of the things that made me really happy was discovering that the spark plugs that arrived inside the head were the factory plugs meaning that this one was unlikely to have come from a car with any significant modification the factory valve stem seals are useless to me they're over 20 years old and will be ultimately freshened up injector seals are still hanging out here their heart is a very slightly malleable rock is that a 13 what the hell 13 is on dsm to get the cylinder head as clean as i can get inside and out i'm exposing all of the oil galleries by pulling their plugs the g6s head has nearly half as many oil gallery plugs as a 1g head or a g6k casting ringing in with only five i'm using the torch just to soften up the thread sealant far less likely to strip it out if you do that first they all came out without a problem the factory is actually rather sparing with their rtv application during assembly and that's the only rtv i found anywhere on it more good signs and deeper and more i look unlike the first generation cylinder heads the second generation cars aren't so overly studded they just simply use bolts to attach things to all the other stuff on the outside of the head you know both methods work it just means that there's less that i have to do in order to fit it inside my ultrasonic cleaner welcome back to my ultrasonic cleaner channel where we pour a bunch of stuff into a thing and then hit a button and then clean up my mess while i wait for it to get hot also thank my lucky stars at this time i get to do this with a fully working functioning freshly oiled air compressor that's eager to work it makes all the difference in the world for this duty put the thing in cook around 60 degrees c for 10 minutes aside turning it halfway through and once i finished dunk it in a rinse of clean water distilled preferred if you have a distillery but this came out of my garden hose judge me and that's okay because i immediately go to work drying it with compressed air now that i have it every square inch whole coolant passage oil gallery everything gets it caps are done come and get it same thing every cap every bolt given the latex glove rubbed down and they all came out squeaky clean they are all very well stamped so they're really easy to sort out while blasting out the head with compressed air i noticed that this one was apparently cast on a wednesday i didn't find any of the normal oil drain blocking casting flash protruded in any of the oil returns no defects of any sort anywhere it doesn't even have dings gashes scratches on it from the surface work being performed on the outside all the bolt centers appeared to be pretty good overall i couldn't find a flaw on any of the caps so i just put them all right back on the freshly cleaned head to keep the mating surfaces spotless then i dried and installed every single bolt snugging them all down and tight when i'm done naturally the ultrasonic cleaner doesn't do everything but i'm one of those weirdos who actually likes scraping composite gasket material off of an aluminum 4g63 cylinder head with a razor blade i can do this all day long i love it no seriously it's like rings on a tree you can see if the gasket leaked you can see how hot it got what it ate and anyone who hunts a thing knows that in order to catch it you need to know what it eats it appears to me that this has never eaten anything that it wasn't supposed to but i can tell the crank let go of the number three rod bearing which is similar to what happened to my original engine this is a typical kind of failure on a ford g63 number three and four are furthest from the oil pump and sandwiched between the thrust burying the flywheel so they take the most abuse whether it's from oil starvation or clutch misalignment based on everything else i see here it wasn't all starvation or the head's fault that any of that happened checking the deck over with a feeler gauge that's even smaller than the 2000 spec for cylinder head warpage it appears that this car never overheated it's all perfectly flat and there's nothing on this deck that won't mill right out of it and holy cow look at that factory uncut speck is exactly 5.2 inches you see that flip it over perfectly flat perfectly true even all the way around there's one teeny blemish where the casting wasn't thick enough to take the first factory milling job and of course that ring around number three where the piston left to hickey there is a little bit of a scratch in the quench areas of number one and three probably happened in shipping but those will mill right out likely like they were never there i think we have a winner where i'm going i don't have to worry about valve guides or anything else you'll see but the fun is really all just about to begin to keep this engine on theme for use in my gsx i have to keep it on theme with its past i have to polish the entire outside casting this is the kind of work that nobody does that nobody wants to do a quality polishing job is nothing like an ultrasonic cleaner you don't just put in a machine and hit a button a quality polished finish is done by hand machines can be used in the early and late stages but if you want to show winning finish everything in between has to be done by hand with scrutinizing eye eyes that are like 20 years younger than mine my big idea now saddles me with the honor the burden and the curse of having to do all this job over again from scratch including the valve cover getting to the finished product takes well over a hundred hours of work the last time i did it i worked on it for two hours a day for two months straight i can't document all of this but at least this demonstrates my punishment for starting off the second gsx build this isn't a job that i ever wanted to do for a second time i learned my lesson the first time yet here we go again i can't put an unpolished head back onto a king of bling car that would be disrespectful this kind of job on a venn diagram intersects with the art and metallurgy circles it doesn't intersect anywhere at all in the performance circle zero horsepower never looks so fast though there's just no way to convey the suffering endured by polishing a big rough cast aluminum piece with complex shapes and tight corners using an accelerated youtube video my editing style saves you all of that i'll get a clock out in a little while to prove it and speaking of dreadful grief inflicting things i think it's way past time for these manifold studs to be gone looks like the big one got bent during shipping if i'm lucky there's no other damage the little ones are all in perfect condition i see no evidence of any of them being replaced as they often break whenever a turbo gets upgraded but none of that going on here another good sign just like with the plugs if you're trying to produce a show quality polished finish on a cast aluminum cylinder head there's just simply no other automotive job that takes longer to do now the plastic thing here is just a body spreader it's a great cheap flat but flexible thing that once i cut it into shape and wrap a piece of sandpaper around it it helps me plane out all the uneven spots reach into tight spaces where my fingers don't fit and define the edges around intersections in the casting i've got both a flat side and a straight edge to choose from with the way i cut it it's flexible enough to let me target my attack at anything that i find to be offensive and it's thin enough to get into most of the tight spaces for detail work this makeshift sanding jig thing is softer than the aluminum so it won't damage it at all if i slip or repeatedly grind its edge against an adjacent spot inadvertently it's a lot easier to work with than the nissan x stereo bumper cover that i learned to cut up and polish the original gsx cylinder head with hey it was my roommate's leftover it was in the shed at the time you know got taken out by a runaway wheel and tire it's not just video clips on the internet there are wild tires running around all over the world look out anyway the bumper cover material worked great but body putty spreaders are cheaper and more abundant the end results beat everything else i've ever tried there's absolutely nothing convenient about working with any of it it's clumsy it just lets me evenly produce the results that i'm looking for plane everything flat and properly apply the technique necessary to produce the highest quality base finish possible before you move up in the grits if you want to see mirror-like reflections in the finished product which onlookers and judges love then the surface has to be flat so to get everything flat and keep it that way there's an easy technique that i'm doing right here and you might have picked up on it already besides this homemade jig thing that i'm using i'm also sanding everything in only one direction that's right this will bring out the high spots and the ripples you knock those down by using block sanding techniques or by simply spending a little extra time there you know and only there and in extreme cases you can use a power tool but start your base finish by hand sanding in only one direction this seemingly perfect head's got a few imperfections that are easy to spot now that we're sanding it your goal is to create a flat surface and they'll stand out like a sore thumb you just have to get all the way through that scale layer of the casting first and create that grain and once you've done every square inch of the head and knocked down all your eye spots then you've completed only the first half of the first step yep congratulations you're still on step one you only did paint house now you must do paint fence in other words to finish up step one you have to cross the grain with the same grit until that grain is completely gone and going 90 degrees to where it was there are places where you'll need the help of some machines that's true but you know if you're crazy enough to involve machinery prior to step six make sure it's always and only in step one and then it's only for grinding never for sanding i've bought every oscillating rotary random orbit tool tried every one of them and regretted every single attempt they do more harm than good if they even do any good at all there is no power tool made for less than a million bucks that will sand a castalone with cylinder head evenly enough to produce a reflection that's any better than a circus mirror every single power tool will dig tracks or edge permanent patterns into the finish there is no flap wheel or sanding buff that removes material on a flat plane the ones that do sand on a flat plane cut too fast but still won't cut straight if the tool is handheld once you gouge its tracks into the finish the only way to get those out is to start over from scratch with your coarse grit again and either block sand it or make this kind of tool thing that i've showed you here that do the whole job by hand once you cut tracks into the finish they take a whole lot longer to sand out than the original scale layer this is why you see me doing it like this cutting through the original random green of the casting is the hardest part of the job you probably noticed that i started with 120 grit this is where we're at some castings may require 80. and if you think you need it do it it could save you a whole lot of time but this one didn't need anything that aggressive if you find yourself working too hard then step down to a lower grip but just know that it's the first grit that always is the hardest to do because you have to get all the way through that scale layer you got to get everything flat you got to spend the most time getting it right the first grit will be the longest most difficult grit you'll face no matter where you start but there's a silver lining to this each subsequent grit layer of sandpaper that you follow it up with only takes half as long as the previous one you just came from and after you've got a flat fresh bare aluminum layer all your sanding out from then on will be the texture left behind by the previous paths of the previous grid of sandpaper but the dark part of that silverline cloud is accentuated by the fact that anything you deem an imperfection at the end of step one will remain in the final finish so your course cut is the most important one and this is where the vast majority of people get this job wrong the final finish is step eight no worthwhile amount of steps number two through eight will ever remove those imperfections or be capable of planing anything flat this is why the course cut is and always should be the longest and hardest part of a polishing job it lays the foundation for the finished product steps two through five turn into autopilot step six you get to start playing with machinery again and that gets fun there's all kinds of contamination in the scale layer there's like oil carbon oxides actual casting sand impurities in the aluminum you'll see the surface change color and cleanup as you get through it i'm stopping to show you steps periodically so that you can see the changes in the surface appearance as we get closer to our desired result the clocks had a ted over four hours but i sanded on this thing for three or four hours before we even started it basically i've got a casting line ground off still requiring cleanup and one little three inch wide strip of one pass of 120 grit completed that took about seven or eight hours total i'm going to keep the clock rolling as i work so you can see that i'm not exaggerating about the time involved versus the distance traveled here i'm going to go ahead and blend the whole casting line area across this side and then work my way back [Music] okay that's new i heard someone banging out here yesterday while i was standing this is really weird i shot the opening scene two weeks before this happened unscripted foreshadowing in real life how about that ornery little bastard yeah so blending the casting line seven something hours in and once i've got that cleaned up i've still gotta blend the long easy stripe that i did and all the detail work around the ports there's no benefit in sanding a little here and a little there all over the head unless you see some spots that need to be blended just work on one little small area at a time and push it along you'll run over everything eventually and working next to where you've already been gives you a good reference on how far you need to take your work once you get out of the flats and into the detail work progress feels like it stops you burn a whole lot of time wherever it's not flat corners and edges easily get rounded off but that's desirable in most cases just be aware of that in case there are areas where you don't want that to happen you'll figure out how to avoid it if you're the one doing it in real time but it's going to happen anyway on the polishing wheel later honestly there's lots of places you don't need to polish on your cylinder head parts that will be obscured by flanges timing covers fuel rails thermostat housings you'll see them all while you're putting it back together and covering up all your hard work but i'm not going to do this one any differently than i did the first one i'm going to pay my homage to the first job to repeat everything the exact same way even the obscured parts except this time i'm going to do it even better on this head we've dived right into the method that won me eight trophies and only three car shows that i entered it into i could see what i didn't like about what i did the first time even though it's flawless in its appearance but this time i'm straight up telling you my secret and showing you how to do it better i'm not encouraging you to do this it's not for everyone in fact once you start it it never stops at this point of step one you're now totally committed to suffering through all of it the spreader tool thing works wonders on the flats but the little one really shines when you get into the tight little areas like this you just couldn't possibly fit your fingers in here to do this or even get into the corners at all even a dremel won't fit in here without cutting into everything around it when you focus closely on the one tiny spot that you're working on this process doesn't seem so bad it's when you sit back and look at the whole thing and then look at the clock that it starts to feel overwhelming that's when you remember that you started on the easy side the semi-finished appearance i've now given it clashes so bad with the rough stuff that yeah you know now you pretty much have to finish it you at least have to finish everything that can be seen right where i'm working that'll totally be obscured by an exhaust gasket and a manifold nobody's going to see it but youtube totally doesn't need this treatment at all i'm just a rebel i guess this just has to be a better job than the other one is all i can't wait to show you all while i'm going through all this trouble and i don't know if i can hold it in for much longer but i have to for now i've got a long way to go still before this one's presentable enough and you guys are so lucky not to have to endure this in real time there's an added benefit to knocking down the part past the scale layer your polishing wheels will last longer once you start step six and your polishing compounds will build up less while you're working as long as you don't cake the wheel to start out with it tends to really stick to the pores of the scale layer while you're working you're done once you can no longer see the pores in the finish in most cases dings chips and dents add character and texture if you polish right over top of them it's the scratches dimples and pores that are the things that cloud the result you front load all the time and effort of cleaning that stuff up later by knocking all of it down right now and it pays dividends all around over time speaking of time i've got one side of one head sanded in one direction and it only took like 16 hours doing this that's all we made one full pass around the clock and i worked on this thing for hours before i even started it i regret nothing i'm committed i have embraced the suck this is the business end of the cylinder head anyway this is one i need to spend my time on it sits front and center in my engine bay and for those with lower centers of gravity or who can stoop low enough to see it because it's on an angle this one's gonna put on quite a show i'm not halfway done with step one yet though i'm one six of the way to having step one finish because i still have to do the intake and thermostat housing sides to cut it down and then cross the grain and what those sides lack in surface area they make up for with intricacy almost all of it is detail work but it's detailed work that makes these exhaust ports seem like child's play in the close-ups you just saw there were clearly some areas that still needed more work i wasn't happy with those pinholes so i spent the next two hours cleaning up all the intersections and corners that didn't get cut quite deep enough for my liking i do not appreciate the appearance of polished swiss cheese that isn't what i'm trying to show anyone how to do and you really are literally reshaping the outside of the part on your rough cut the shape of the parts up to you i'll be referring back to this side of the cylinder head to match all the other areas that i prepare but there's one thing you'll discover as you're working with your part all this talk about creating grain yes you can create a grain texture but the casting itself has its own grain certain sides of the casting often turn out cleaner and smoother than on others and as we work our way around we often find that one side of the casting is rougher some casting lines are thicker than others some of you watch me port the hyundai head and that one demonstrated that sometimes the top and bottom halves of the mold don't even line up well luckily this one's nothing like the hyundai but whenever you encounter this kind of stuff or these kind of changes in the casting it's up to you to decide what's unacceptable and what qualifies his character or personality if you want it to be perfect then removing its character and reshaping it just adds a lot more time to your clock at this point i've spent like four hours trying to cut through the thermostat housing side using 120 grit sandpaper and the scale layer and casting grain here is so much deeper than what's on the exhaust side it's just the way she goes it really didn't get me very far but i'm glad it didn't because now i get to show you why you'd want to step down to a coarser grit so if you've got globs of cracks in the corners or deep casting pores that are thicker than your cut and you're spending way too much time getting results trying to cut that down then do it step it down never mind all that time trying to cut through it with 120 grit it'll take you four times longer to fix it if you don't save yourself the trouble we'll clean all this back up when we cross the grain again remember on step one is just the scale layer that we're after think about your thermostat housing and what that covers up think about your cam angle sensor if you're using a different one than mine those things are big they cover things so if you're the one doing the job think about the size of your polishing wheels and bobs where you'll be able to fit them and where you want there are parts of many castings that you just won't be able to polish think about how almost nobody understands the efforts involve making parts shiny that they can't see you can make a beautiful polished finish without going through the same level of detail and nobody but you will ever know that it's incomplete but now think about how if you cheese out and don't do it the thought of what's left unfinished will haunt you for the rest of that part's life there you go just a warning that's a pretty good indication of why this becomes a sickness approaching 20 hours on the clock now we know it's really closer to 24. you've seen me fearlessly commit to the 80 grit which makes it a few spots where the cast was grainier than others mostly in the intersections it's just difficult to sand the compound corners and this would have taken forever with 120 grit but there's still lots of pinholes in the recesses that are a little too deep to come out in the next cut so i broke out the dremel again we're still on step one remember this is fine i cleaned up the casting lines a tad better and cut down the coarse grain using a coarse polishing buff this is just mechanical assistance but every time you use that lifeline it creates more work for you you always have to go back manually over it and sand its tracks you know even the course buffs will leave a higher grain finish than the ratings that they're assigned because the speed they operate you'll see the texture change whatever you touch it down and if you don't go back over it the final finish will be completely different from everywhere where you didn't if you just clean up the edges during the course cut and then go back over it well then this can save you a whole lot of time if you get overzealous and you do too much then it's going to cost you a lot of time that's the point i'm trying to make and i know it's repetitive but using power tools to cut through the rough cast is cheating save it for the inconspicuous areas and don't use power tools at all on your center pieces and then there's areas like this the intake side is on the back of the engine nobody's ever going to see it but if you're going for show quality results a judge might go looking for it aside from being buried under the fuel system wiring harness throttle cables and behind a curved intake manifold there are just so many deep nooks and crannies on this side of the head that you'll never be able to get all the way in there it's places like these where you'll cure your illness by taking a half measure patting yourself on the back and saying you did the best you could just so you know i wouldn't teach you how to drive yourself nuts without giving you the recipe for the antidote polishing aluminum is very much the same as painting a car welding or refinishing furniture and yeah stuff like that your initial prep work is what determines the quality of the final outcome as long as you understand that and execute as such well then you're good furniture that isn't glued together by robots is typically only finished wherever you can see it don't treat your polishing efforts any differently because it's only a visual modification after all you see that clock is just burning up the hours no we're still on the course cut there's plenty of cheating going on on this side because as it stands right now i'm still preparing the stuff that you can't see from polishing ultimately the nooks and crannies won't even matter not on this side you can crawl under a table pretty easily though so these efforts that you see here are basically me putting a good enough finish on the bottom side of my table just for the judges my arm's destroyed we'll do the rest tomorrow [Music] all right i have no idea oh yeah i didn't stop this no clue where we're at on the clock i'm just i think we're done with this thing you get it it takes a long time actually i added up the memory cards and it was 32 and a half hours nobody's ever gonna see this i spent about another half hour so cleaning up what i left behind and straightening out the grain you're about to see for yourself the exact reason why this directional grain thing is so important now we do paint fence you know what let's get this thing back out it's time to cross the grain it's only paint house and paint fence that you should ever do in this preparation battle never do wash car washing car never helps anything only paint house paint fence we cut it with 80 and i know that i said to use the same grit normally you would but i'm going to do 120 grit across the 80 grit stuff and get all three sides of this thing up to the exact same level it'll be a little bit more work but it's fine things will really speed up once we get around to the exhaust side again my sanding techniques will continue to involve as we do steps two and three and so on and all that matters is that i visually follow my own tracks that i created right here in step one 80 and 120 are both aggressive cutting grits on cast aluminum surfaces it's not as big of a step apart in coarseness as we'll be taking very soon anyway as you cross the grain and linger in one area for a bit eventually you see the grain from the previous past dissolves and disappears into the finish it gets replaced by the crust texture once the previous pass is completely gone you're done with that spot keep moving the grain is your guide for when you're done enough as well as for where you haven't been it was plain flat on the first pass anyway and what you missed gets cleaned up right here these coarse cut grains are easy to see but as you progress much higher into the fine grits your tracks on the finish can become less and less obvious that's how this grain helps you it's important that you cover every square inch the exact same way to produce a consistent result by crossing the grain all the way up to the point where it meets the polishing wheel it keeps that amount of material that you're removing and the flatness and the cutting depth even all while giving you a clear visual sign of where you're working there you go and each time you establish a grain you removed about half the amount of surface material as the thickness of the grains of your sandpaper each time you double your grits you're now removing only a quarter as much material as you did with both cuts of the previous grit this is why defects left behind after the coarse cut in step one are going to be left in your final finish once a grain is established you can follow it easily and visually either with the plastic spreader things or anything else that you feel the need to invent by hand whatever you have to do to maintain its integrity reflections will show you what you missed even with 80 and 120 grit it's a little satisfying to watch this evolve this is how you lay down the foundation for your polished finish none of these processes really look like actually polishing anything at all yet but my example starts here because you can't do the polishing right without doing all of what's in this video first you have to start with a solid clean oil free casting which we did you saw this all happen step zero of this polishing job needs to be even more scrutinizing than step one when the preparation work finally starts and with the time and effort invested into a job like this you'd better damn be certain that you're starting off with a near flawless part that isn't already at the end of its service life of course we're talking about just the thermostat housing or some other small part or anything cut from sheet aluminum or whatever that you're trying to polish you don't have to be as critical about step zero you can get away with that stuff but if the part happens to contain coolant oil explosions your valve train and it's also driven by a belt off of your rotating assembly really then you'd better start out with a candidate you'll have a guaranteed nice long life with it's a huge effort investment to do this to a part that's why this video about polishing started with 10 minutes of inspection measuring and cleaning that you've seen before so don't commit to this job unless the part is really worth it better yet don't commit to this job do not start polishing and there won't be any if you polish buried and obscured things then the only way to maintain them is to disassemble them again you know you don't want to wash polished aluminum stuff or get it wet because if you do if you if you have to wash it then you gotta rinse and dry it immediately and then repolish it with some kind of a paste or a product to remove the minerals that washing it left behind it eliminates all the practical use of that engine in rain ice snow sleet generally even with humidity as it sits if you leave a battery connected to the electrical system with the slow drain on the electrical system well by the time that voltage hits zero you'll find that there's a white crusty oxide film all over the entire outside of that head so bare polished aluminum is a reactive surface that requires maintenance over the entire life of the part don't start won't be none but maybe now those of you who've never thought much about what goes into this can appreciate what others have endured in order to bring you these shiny cars at car shows how those cars have been permanently converted into sunny day clear night warm weather driving only cars with no puddles around forever and forward and there afterwards so do not do this to your daily driver you will never be able to keep up with it i don't believe there's another material in the engine bay that looks quite as good as hand polished cast aluminum though there's just something about its dull neutral grayish tone once polished to a mirror finish that just stops everyone dead in their tracks everyone loves to look around and see themselves in it and damn it to all of you who feel the need to have to touch it that's where this goes that's where you will end up on the other side of this just so that you all have now been warned you also get to know many metal finishing tools and products along your journey if you ever start this out there's a million different ways to do this i'm just showing you what won me trophies get a worthwhile part to polish first and once you're sure it checks out then do this to it this is where it all begins if your goal was show quality results step zero and step one finally we're coming up on the end of step one there were a few places where i was in production mode instead of pay attention mode so i had to go back over a few areas and clean up what i missed just like stepping up in grits crossing the grain takes half as long clock says we're a little over 16 hours in well i had the 32 and a half hours from the first pass and there's your full time work week plus eight and a half hours of overtime and that's only step one that doesn't include any of step zero or the year i spent looking for the right cylinder head to do this with now also be the guy to have to film and edit this either way i'm not trying to convince anyone that they should do this this isn't the way you have to do it but it's what got me my results this video is 94 full 64 gig memory cards 82 of them are just sanding metal 12 were step zero each memory card is 27 minutes i gave you my show winning secret and i worked my butt off to do it so please hit that like button for me and stay tuned for the next episode as we watch this thing transform and step up the grits and change our techniques but don't do this do not no againsto no es bueno presena el buton me gusta [Music] so [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: Jafromobile

Views: 9,464

Rating: 4.9831223 out of 5

Keywords: Polish, polishing, aluminum, aluminium, polished, shine, bling, DIY, how to, how-to, vfaq, learn, sand, sanding, inspect, inspection, cylinder, head, 4g63, mitsubishi, eclipse, GSX, talon, Galant, DeTomaso, Pantera, Eagle, technique, techniques, process, step, steps, sandpaper, paper, make, tool, car show, trophy, winning, test, Jafro, Jafromobile, mirror, finish

Id: n-bK63FdSKE

Length: 43min 51sec (2631 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 01 2021