I recently bought a set of front and rear Spoon upper strut bars from a guy on CL, and it the rear one look like it was used to beat a curb with. The front one is in ok condition, just needs cleaned up a bit. The previous owner said he bought them like this but didn't do anything to fix the rear because you couldn't really see it.

Anyway, what I need to know is how to get rid of the "curb rash" on the bars, since they are steel and not aluminum I don't know if they can be sanded down or not. Surprisingly there's not much to be found on the internet about how to do this. And after the bar is repaired, can it be polished or does it have to be re-chromed?

Here are pics of the rear bar. Sorry my camera wouldn't focus in on the damage since it was so close.:what:

ninjaedit: Mods if this is the wrong section please move it and lmk.

 

Yeah, just sand and polish. Sandpaper will cut through steel just fine, especially with a power sander of some kind (air or electricity).

 

Ya I'm interested to see how this is done my spoon bars are used and they aren't in the greatest shape either.

 

Ok well I will probably be picking up some sandpaper today, and make a DIY maybe. Any advice on what grit to start with for the really bad parts? I was thinking 120.

 

120 sounds good, maybe 80 if the 120 is going too slow.

I'd use either power tools or a sanding block for sure.

 

I started on a DIY today, I will post a link when finished. It may be a few weeks as I am pretty busy.

 

I would start with a lower grit like then work up to a higher grit, higher the grit the easier to polish.

 

If you want a mirror polish, it can be achieved using different grit rouges and hard buffing wheels on a bench grinder or on your drill. Bench grinder makes it much easier in my opinion but many people don't have that luxury. I got a 4 pack of different "grit" rouges that I've used with my drill to polish up plenty of things! It was about 12$ and wheels were generally below 5$.

 

Progress so far: I started with an 80 grit flapwheel drill attachment. It did ok but I still needed something rougher. So I tried a 120 grit sanding wheel on the dremel (for higher speed than the drill). It did great for the rough spots. I then went over those areas again with an 80 grit to smooth it out, looks pretty good.

There are a few places where its dented deep enough that sanding won't do the job. Is it possible to us JB Weld or something to fill it, and then sand it smooth again? Since I'm polishing it I can't use bondo.