I've got a small T25 I'm using on another project and happen to run across a pic of a similar one that looked to be polished. Since my new manifold is chrome, is it possible to polish a turbo, and it look half way descent? Without spending a fortune of course.

My girl got me a Dremel and about a million attachments and I want to use it on something.

Can this be done? What would I need?

 

Can this not be done?

 

anything can be polished, but I dunno how to do it.

 

go to your local auto parts store and order up two tubes of elbow-grease, then get busy!

 

lmfao lololololololololololololololol

 

I know it's really time consuming but I'm waiting on other parts for my swap, so I have some time on my hands. Like I said I want to use my dremel for something. lol

 

I did it to my old turbo with my dremel and it didn't turn out that good. I used about 20 little buffing wheels, and wased a bunch of time. I used the little tiny cup of polishing compound that came with the dremel kit, I think the stuff was red. My turbo's finish wasn't smooth either, it had the rough texture on the compressor side like most turbos do. If you wan't to do it anyway just go to NAPA and find some hard polishing compound and start polishing, your's might turn out better than mine did.

 

in order to polish it, you have to remove the texture, my guess would be to use sand paper, start with rough then work down to extremely fine, then polish

 

the steps u take to polish the turbo is:

1.sand with 600 grit until smooth
2.then move to 800 grit until smooth focusing on dips a casting flaws
3.move to 1000 grit til smooth
4.then 1500 grit
5.then 1500 grit wetsanding
6.then nice healthy layer of polish w/ mothers or flitz

should come out like butter


Modified by RpwrdTurbocoupe at 10:29 AM 1/21/2005

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by RpwrdTurbocoupe &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote"> the steps u take to polish the turbo is:

1.sand with 600 grit until smooth
2.then move to 800 grit until smooth focusing on dips a casting flaws
3.move to 1000 grit til smooth
4.then 1500 grit
5.then 1500 grit wetsanding
6.then nice healthy layer of polish w/ mothers or flitz

should come out like butter


Modified by RpwrdTurbocoupe at 10:29 AM 1/21/2005</TD></TR></TABLE>

awesome!!

 

I'm guessing you've done this.. have any "before & after" photos?

 

I forget who but there is a company that sells some bling turbo's. They look really good too.

Someone posted pics here a while back. Some of the housings had provisions for external wastegates.

I think it was mostly dsm stuff though.

 

I don't have any before pics, but you can visualize what a turbo looks like that hasn't been polished. Here is an after pic, I also gave my intake pipe the same treatment, but started with 400 grit because it was already somewhat smooth. I used basically the same combo as the other guy, except I started with 250 grit to knock off the rough surface, then 400, 600, 1000, 1500, then 2000 and after that I used 2000 with mineral spirits as a lubricant, let me tell you it works wonders. Then mother's to polish it off.

 

Wow! That's looks alot better than I thought you'd be able to do at home. Did you use anything like a dremel or some kind of sander?

 

Nice website btw

 

I would honestly pay someone to polish it. I polished my jackson alt. bracket and it frickin took forever. I started with 330 grit and worked down then finished with rouge and a buffing wheel. It definitely was not worth the hours of work it took.

 

as long as u sand and polish in one direction and get rid of all the divets, ur good, and i polish everything myself including my piping, turbo, and manifold. and it all looks good as a professional job. Its just time consuming and takes alot of elbow grease.

 

I used sandpaper to smoothen down the rough texture. Use low grit, then go higher. Then wet sand it. After, polish it up with red rouge.

Oh yes, it took me 2 weeks to do this. And I still haven't gotten into all the nooks and crannys but oh well

 

kinda ot, but my intercooler has some blemishes on the endtanks where it used to be polished, could i take some 1500grit sandpaper, sand, then wet sand them out and repolish?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by RuskeR &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote"> Wow! That's looks alot better than I thought you'd be able to do at home. Did you use anything like a dremel or some kind of sander?

</TD></TR></TABLE>

I used a dremel in some of the nooks and crannies, but I'd say 95% of it is just a ridiculous amount of elbow grease. It took me probably a half day to get mine to look like it does.

 

I polished my old t3/t04e and it took forever. I got impatient and never finshed it, but it did shine nicely.

 

To start right off with sandpaper will take forever.

I used a flexible sanding disc drill attachment (5" disc) with 120 grit to completely remove the cast finish. It takes about 10 mins to completely grind down the cast finish. And with the flexible backing for the disc, it can follow the contours of the compressor housing and makes the job a lot easier. Then I would switch over to a 220 grit sanding disc, and then all the way up to 600 grit. Afterwards, I would sand by hand from 600-2000 grit (water sanding), and the 2000 grit will be used with soapy water. If you followed this method, you can actually get a mirror shine without any use of chrome polish The sanding disc drill attachment speeds things up... The first time I;ve done this was on my valvecover, and it took 5-6 hours just by hand sanding. By using the drill attachment for my later projects, , I'd say 2 hours or so depending on the part.

Here's a pic of my compressor:


Here's a glimpse of the valve cover:


Here's a pic of a polished valvecover, intake manifold plenum and vacuum canister (tower bar and radiator came polished already):


Sorry, no before and after pics... Cast finish has nothing worthwhile to take pics of

 

How did you get around the raised lettering without removing them? This is what I'm starting with.

 

...yeah it's dirty, I just pulled it off one of my motors tonight.

 

I use a wire brush to get into the crevices of the lettering... That should get a lot of the rough cast surface near the letters... Eventually, you will have to do the letters and tight spots by hand.