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polishing a plenum


gazzard27

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thanks mate,

 

i'll take a look, also how much?

 

£140 on an exchange basis.

 

That's a good price! would probably cost not much less than that just to buy all the compounds, sand papers, discs etc!

 

My setup costs were around £400, with mops, sand paper, bench polisher, compounds, flap wheels. There's an ongoing cost, but yeah when you look at the cost and the return, it's not profitable really, especially with the amount of time it takes.

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haha sorry wasso overlooking that comment it sounded like i was being a dick, tbf im sure you've got top notch equipment for polishing and i did look at your work, they are very very shiny. i mean no disrespect.

 

if i had £140 id happily buy one of yours but unfortunately at the moment i dont, so i may attempt this myself and if i epicly fail i may by one of yours haha :)

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haha sorry wasso overlooking that comment it sounded like i was being a dick, tbf im sure you've got top notch equipment for polishing and i did look at your work, they are very very shiny. i mean no disrespect.

 

if i had £140 id happily buy one of yours but unfortunately at the moment i dont, so i may attempt this myself and if i epicly fail i may by one of yours haha :)

 

I tried before, the problem is, because it's cast the surface isn't flat. I got the top beautifully shiny, but all of the dimples/lines/marks that I couldn't get to stayed horrible and it actually looked worse. Wasso smooths the surface out which gets rid of all the marks, which is why it looks so lovely.

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im not denying wasso's work at all, just by looking at the pics id recommend him to friends :)

 

i'll let you guys know how i get on when i do it, if it looks terrible i will come grovelling to wasso lol

 

I'm not saying you are, just letting you know the challenge :)

 

I'd start trying to get rid of the dimples before the actual polishing :)

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This is the problem, £20 will get you some of the way, but to really get the results you need, you require machinery. Pop into YouTube - polishing Aluminium and you'll see why machinery is needed.

 

The initial process is by hand, but to get a top notch finish, our little blessed hands don't cut the mustard.

 

By all means, have a bash, at least I respect you for giving it a go. Don't expect to get the results you want though over a weekend. Also as mentioned by AliveBoy, the pitting is the nightmare. These need to be removed to get a perfect finish. Then, to top the lot, you've got the awkward areas, which are truly a bastardo.

 

Give it a bash and see how you fair.

 

Happy to help with tips.

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There's no way you're going to get this done over a weekend, if you do it yourself, either.

 

I bought a plenum from a scrapped car (cost around £50 or £60 IIRC) and did it myself - it was a real pain in the a$$ and took ages. My logic was to spend the time and then swap it on the car when it was all done. After about 8 hours of hard work I got my gf's son to take over - after he spent about 15 hours on it we took it to a machine polisher to finish it off which i) cost £30 and ii) only really did the main surface as they couldn't get in to the nooks and crannys.

 

After that experience - buying one off Wasso is worth every penny as all the effort I spent on mine effectively paid me about £1 per hour, apart from the aching fingers and the black cr_p you get all over yourself

 

Good luck if you want to have a go but it's not a good way to spend your time and it's not really that much fun even when you enjoy doing things on your car yourself!

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I used to do these a few years back, i think the thread is somewhere. Please do not underestimate the time it will take to polish a plenum, its one dirty, pig of a job that requires specialist tools, it can be done with a series of brushes grinders and polishing compounds but i'd certainly allow more than a weekend. Satisfying if you can do it yourself though!

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