I found some rouge at Lowe's. It's called Cleaning & Polishing Compound #6: High Gloss Polishing. It's in the tools section. Wow, this stuff really makes a difference! The throttle body looks almost like chrome now. It's not a true "mirror" finish but it's extremely brilliant. I tried to capture all the reflections in the pictures. Shiny objects are so hard to photograph.

So here's the process. Sand with 400, 600, 800, then 1500 grit and sand in a different direction (90 degrees off) with each higher grit. Some grits can be substituted as I did (320, 400, 800, 1500). Changing directions each time is hard on such a small piece like this and I didn't do it, just thought it was worth mentioning. Once you have it looking and feeling really smooth, get a Dremel, some felt polishing pads, and the previously mentioned rouge. Touch the felt pad to the rouge as it's spinning (very high speed) and it will melt some off onto the felt. Use moderate force when polishing. The rouge has to have enough force to cut like sandpaper but too much will overheat the Dremel and polish.

I plan on sealing it with some stuff called ZoopSeal. There's only one place in my city that sells it according to their website and they're far away. It'll probably be a while before I can put some on. Anyone else have some recommendations for sealants? Preferably ones that won't fade, get dull, or yellow with heat. ZoopSeal is supposed to be good up to 400 degrees and is claimed to last for 2 to 3 years.

There's a long ways to go to have my whole engine bay shiny like this. I plan to take a few things off here and there to polish whenever I have time. I'm in no hurry. It'll probably take a few months, or even a year depending on how much time I devote to this. For the throttle body I probably have about 5 hours sanding, 1 hour polishing and half an hour cleaning it up, all spent over the course of a couple days.





These pics are of the bare finish without any Mother's polish applied. The rouge did a pretty good job getting it shiny. I might put some Mother's on to protect it until I can seal it.