Hello,

Does anyone have any ideas on how to make this full exhaust system shine like new? It's 304 Stainless Steel. I've heard about wet sanding and then polishing, but I'm not totally sure how to tackle this.





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THANKS for looking!

 

start with a high grit, prolly around 1000 and wet sand it, moveing to higher grit. then polishing compound

 

Thanks! So, just start with 1000 and then maybe a 2000?

 

um, u could, might want to do like 1000, 1200, 1500, 2000, then polish with a polish wheel and compound.

 

I would not recommend sanding it. your asking for a lot more trouble then its worth. If it were mine, I would get some #0000 steel wool and metal polish and go at it. make sure its #0000 steel wool not #000, 3 will marr it up and scratch it.

stainless steel is already shiny once it's cleaned up, this exhuast is just dirty and tarnished. polish and steel wool will do the trick. you will thank me later. you would want to slit your wrist if you started sanding this with 800 girt. that would take forever to try and sand and buff out. especially on something that wont sit still while your buffing it.

 

^^

I agree with this guy..

I would buy a variable speed hand grinder and take off the grinding wheel, then get the small buffing wheel (from home depot) and use a low-med speed and buff the hell out of it.

 

Sounds good! Thanks for the input guys!

 

https://honda-tech.com/forums/honda-acura-28/%2A%2A%2Ahow-%2A%2A%2A-polish-header-1563439/

hopefully this'll help

 

FINALLY got a chance to clean it up a little this afternoon:

 

Looks like you did a great job on polishing...

 

Looks good

 

Wow,big difference! Looks really good! I have been polishing stainless for a long time. One thing I've noticed is that with items such as your exhaust Tru Shine is correct. Further more you can take it a step further and start out with a slightly more abrasive compound and finish with the white compound. It depends on what type of metal is being polished but sometimes if the metal has been prepped properly and is smooth enough you can go straight to the white compound.

 

Nice job man. Looks good. I did one last spring, a WS2 cat back I haggled down to $200 because I told the guy it wasn't in as good of shape as I thought it would be

I did 1500 -> 2000 -> rubbing compound -> Mother's mag polish. Hand polished, took about an hour.

Before:



After:

 

Looks really great, will use those tips for when I have to polish mine!

 

God, that looks fantastic after what you did to it.


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That's ****, bro! Nice job!

I sold mine for the asking price after cleaning it up, thanks to everyone's input on this thread!

 

What do you mean by "rubbing coumpound"? I really wanna do this to my muffler!

 

Thanks for the compliments.

It's coarser than polish. I've had the same tub for about fifteen years:

 

Can a stock muffler be polished like the one you did? Your work was amazing. I want to polish my stock one so bad now. Do I need the rubbing copmound? I have the mothers and the sandpaper. I just dont have the turtle wax

Also, what kind of rags/cloth did you use?

 

great idea, I built my entire system from T 304 including the muffler, I thought about doing this before it goes back on permanently, the only issue is I wont want to keep polishing it

 

Yeah I need to clean mine up. If you do a little maintenance on it it will stay pretty nice. It's only if you let it go for months or a year or whatever. I also got pretty good results on my old N1, which had never really been polished and has been sitting for three years or so.

Tony, a tub of compound can be had for a few bucks. I'm sure you can even get it at Wal-Mart. You could probably skip it, but you're just making more work for yourself with the final polish. It's a good bridge from sanding to polishing. I use terry towels for my heavier work and microfiber for the final stuff.

I'm positive you could do this to a stock system, it would just be more work. Anything made of metal can be polished, it's just a matter of how much effort you want to put into a particular material. At work I've polished Inconel and Hast-X to a mirror shine in a matter of seconds with the right tools.

 

I'm not worried about the price, its just I live on Guam, and I cant find the Turtle Wax rubbing compound. All I keep getting is the wax itself


I'll swing by a few more places and see what I can find. I hop mine turns out as good as yours. How long did you sand them before starting the rubbing compound?

 

Nice work, I gotta do this to my exhaust before the winter

 

There's nothing special about the Turtle Wax brand compound, it's just what I had laying around. I'm sure you can find something out there.

Just wetsand until the surface begins to look foggy and then work your way back out to a shine. Same as you would doing a headlight resto or something.

 

Wait, off subject... Are you the one I sold an SiR cluster to w few years back? I shipped it out of Idaho.