Wow....That's a damn good price man.

Pics on the car soon I hope.

 

The wastegate's billett aluminum, right? The manifold is Stainless... I'd have done them all for $150 shipped if you disassembled them first.

I wouldn't touch a small cast aluminum part for under $100 unless the surface had already been CNC'd or turned on a lathe.

PS: I'm about to go outside and polish my power steering pump. :loco:

 

It was $175 to polish my stainless manifold, aluminum compressor housing, and aluminum skunk2 manifold (ouch):



I did the mount and the wastegate myself. h:

 

Oh, you meant... polish the INSIDE of the intake manifold. That's a boatload less surface area than polishing the outside, too. I was talking about the outside of cast aluminum parts, and you have to be criminally insane to take the time it takes to polish a Intake Manifold. They're 5x tougher than polishing the outside of a cylinder head.

BTW: The power steering pump came out okay. Certainly not as good as my EGR valve, but I didn't go nuts on it because I may have to replace it, If it were rebuildable, then I'd spend a few more hours on it, but I won't know that until tomorrow.

 

hahahahaha... I almost feel like I'm competing here, but I know I'll lose. :chuckles:

I did my valve cover lettering tonight. I skipped from 400 to 600 to 1500 and I think the jump from 600 to 1500 is too much since there's still small scratches visible. I think I need to get an 800 or 1000 in there. h:

Teach me o' wise one. :bowdown:

 

The trick is to sand in one direction until you've wet sanded everything as smooth as you can get it, then sand at a 90° angle to that until you've sanded all of those scratches out, then step up to a finer grit and do it again. You can see the scratches best that way. Eventually they'll all come out, but usually not until 800-1000 grit. going from 600 to 1500 is too great of a jump. The part is ready for the polisher after going the 2nd direction with 600 grit. I did the front of my head to 1500 grit because it's too hard to get in there with the polisher, and doing that allowed me to hand-polish it. I took my valve cover down to 800 grit and machine-polished it, and it's a bit shinyer than my head.

But no matter how much you polish that thing, it won't become a DSM :rofl: j/k

I just like polished parts because of originality. 99% of the mofo's out there don't have the patience, time, or know-how to do it. And when you're done, it actually FEELS to just know you have it. It's impractical as hell on a race motor, borderline-futile. I do it anyway.

You're so totally gonna be addicted, man. I'm warning you. Your post count is going to stop rising. Your girl will leave you. A few things about the polishing wheel... Long sleeves and pants. You'd better like getting black boogers, earwax, pillow cases, raccoon-face from the safety goggles. That's the real sacrifice. But the second you see that finish on there, you can't stop.

 

:lmfao:

I already have experienced the black boogers, earwax, racoon face from this. :rofl:

What kind of polishing wheel do you use and what kind of compound?

 

Crap ass log manifold :down: :down: :down: :down:

 

I usually begin with black rouge because it has emory compound. It's a fast cutting compound and usually will put a shine on Aluminum very quickly. It will put a shine on un-sanded cast aluminum. Looks like crap unless you sand it down to at least 400-grit, though. It will also put a shine on Stainless Steel after only sanding it down to 220 grit. Good stuff. Turns an hour into minutes and is hard as fawk to find. Try a welding supply store. I got 4 kinds of rouge in a box for $9. That's how I discovered the black and I'm almost out of it. I guess I've gone black (insert your joke here).

Then I follow it with white rouge which is much finer and this is what puts the real mirror finish on things. I tried jeweler's rouge and it was a waste of time. That stuff is only good for precious metals. I should have known better. It might improve the shine that white rouge can leave on the part, but you won't really need to.

No black pillow cases yet, eh?

 

:closeup: do i spy a Josh in all of those blinin pictures? green shirt and khaki pants, just get home from work? h: