i am looking for someone who has polished their stock valvecover themselves, or if anybody has done it and wished they just painted it. just kinda looking for the grits/stripper you used, etc... any info at all would be cool. thanks(i posted in appearance forum, but nothing)

 

i helped my friend do his 92dx motor back when he had that.
it was not hard, just a lot of work. well time. but it was not to bad
if you liek that look, go for it...

 

Its easy on the D16.

I did it by hand the first time, then a second time with a sander. The sander is obviously easier, but I still did the last few steps by hand.

I started with 80 grit. This is the most important part of the process. Get the cover down to all good aluminum. Your first step determines what it will look like in the end. After the first step, you're just sanding the sand marks out of the cover from the previous step until its smooth. Get 3m sand paper, or something good.

I went...

80
100
150
320
400
600
1200

Then I used MAAS polish. The polish makes the shine. Get MAAS if you can. I've never personally used anything near as good as MAAS!

Good luck.

 

sweet thanks, i couldn't have got a better reply! where would i get maas polish? home depot? crappy tire?

 

I'm not sure where to get it. I get it at Meijer Food Stores. It's tough to find, but honestly I've tried about 10 different polishes, and none of them work even close to as well as MAAS. (I could be spelling it wrong).

 

or you could use wenol.

personally i used mothers

i dont know if i would start out with 80, your scratches will be too deep i would start out around 300



it doesnt look that good, but i had been working on the car and those spots are finger prints

 

mm..i don' know what you guys are talking about..but i would like to polish my valve cover too..what do you guys mean by grit? and what are the steps in doing so? thanks!

 

grit=courseness of the sandpaper

on the back of the sandpaper there is usually a number that tells the grit of the paper...the higher the number the more finer the grit.....finer grit is used to smooth smaller imperfections

 

so what did you guys use to get the old flakey paint off evenly? i've gotta do mine too. how do you think it would look with just stripped off paint..not polished or anything?

 

AIRCRAFT PAINT STRIPPER,
GET some rubber gloves, and start applying it to the valve cover, waith 30 seconds and the stuff rubbs off.

 

well, i stripped my cover last night, the cover w/o the paint looks good, dull aluminum finish. thought about leaving it that color cause i didn't mind it, but had bought all the sandpaper so... anyway i started w/80 grit, it is kinda rough but the scratches work out... after a while, hehe. i ended up buying autosol polish, couldn't find maas. so we'll see. so far so good, thanks for the help guys!

 

i'm gonna be different and NOT polish it. it'll look like crap, and match the rest of my car

 

how about this one, this car is super nice and is one of the best cars i have seen that is show and daily dirven..


[Modified by 88civic, 9:32 AM 5/9/2002]

 

ok, i just bought me a big ol can of aircraft stripper. got some more detailed instructions?

 

put that shiat on, let it soak into the black paint.
clean the valve cover off...easy as pie.!

 

yeah, to get the old paint off, i used this stuff called Dad's spray or soemthing like that. I got it from Sears for less than 10 bucks. Its this gooey stuff you spray on, and after about 15 minutes, the paint bubbles up, and you just wipe it off, and all the paint comes with it. I tried sanding the paint off, but that was so much harder than doing this. just be careful, this stuff is pretty savage, it'll hurt if you touch it, don't ask how i know...


[Modified by carsaregood, 9:42 PM 5/9/2002]

 

ok, i got MOST of the paint off the valve cover..there's still a little i couldn't get, and there's some dark spots in the aluminum. should i go ahead with the sandpaper now, or keep stripping? i hit it with stripper 3 times.

 

same thing w/my valvecover, it had some real dark spots by the oil filler hole and the timing chain cover. i just sanded them out w/80 grit then continued w/120 etc...

 

The above is something to thing about. I started with 80 because my valve cover was 10 years old at the time and that aluminum had some real dark spots and rough spots. You'll be able to get the scratches out, but you may be able to save time starting higher if your vavle cover is already in good shape. Personnally I think that if you start with 300 you'll still be able to see dark spots, but it really depends on what you're starting with.

I can't say it enough about the MAAS. I tried so many different polishes (Mothers, 3m, etc) and the MAAS was miles above the rest. Going over it twice with MAAS turned it from looking like something I had done to something almost professional looking in a matter of minutes.

 

ok, got me some sandpaper and some maas. i'll post pics of the progress

btw, how do you get to the really small spots like betwee the letters?

 

I polished mine myself but I dont have a pic of it....


Yager-

 

where are you getting 1200 from? i can't find that stuff anywhere

thanks

 

home depot or autozone

 

homedepot didnt have it

 

i couldn't find 1200 either so i just went w/1500, i am also curious as to how to get the small parts between the letters, and where you found the maas polish????