Mirror Polishing a 1.8T Aluminium Manifold - Guide

Hi all

I always get asked at the shows ( who does your polishing ) so I thought Id help out some of you folks to do it yourself and save hopefully a small fortune in the process.

TOOLS NEEDED



RANDOM ORBITAL SANDER
ANGLE GRINDER WITH FLAP WHEEL 40 OR 80G
POWERFILE ( NOT ALWAYS NEEDED UNLESS YOU HAVE A LOT OF INTRICATE PARTS)
LOADS OF GOOD QUALITY VECRO DISCS
BLUE POLISHING COMPOUND
DRILL OR BENCH GRINDER POLISHER
WHITE SOFT STITCHED POLISHING MOP


GRITS BEST FOR POLISHING ROUGH CAST ( IN ORDER OF USE)

40
80
120
240
320
500
800
1200
1500

At the start standard factory manifold looked like this



Start with the 40g this is probably the most important stage , the aim is to get all the rough cast to a smooth even finish, but be very careful as you can damage the part, if its your first time use a orbital sander as this will do the job more gently but will take longer, if your a dab hand you can use a angle grinder with a flap disc (40g) very lightly to remove all imperfections and even cast joins and seams.

Once done it should look like this



Then its time to hit it with a 80g making sure to take your time and remove all the previous scratches made with the 40g, should look like this



Then just continue stage after stage after 80g move to 120g remembering each time to remove scratches from the previous sandpaper















Finally to the 1500 stage should look like this



If you've got this far then your sanding days are done now its time to polish !

Using your bench polisher or drill with mop apply the blue compound and start polishing

Should look like this after first pass, take your time move slowly and not to much pressure and even.





Once happy then apply less blue compound and start the final buff , doing the whole part again until no scratches are left and you have a mirror polish shine









You can keep it looking like this by once a month polishing by hand with autosol aluminium polish works great ! The process above can be used on wheels and virtually any aluminium part .

Hope this guide helps you guys out !

nice work!

Well got bit bored sitting at home with rain continuing to pour down ! so thought Id go all out and start work on the intricate valve inlet side of the manifold !

Warning  - Do not even attempt unless you have a lot of time and patience.

Firstly had to get the Bosch Multi and mini grider , dremel and plenty more vecro discs and even 3m rolocs discs out for this next part



Taken the cast down took what felt like ever ! just when you thought you were done Id noticed more cast texture





After about 4 hours got to this stage below












Then after another hour checking all sections were up to a 1500 finish it was finally time for polishing ( AGAIN)

And here we have it a fully polished inlet manifold ! ( still needs little final buffing but looking pretty nice )











Enjoy !

Nice one fella, looks mint! 8)

You can write all the how to guides in the world but you can never write one about how to be patient Thats the thing thats needed above everything else  

suppose the hard bit is keeping it looking like that once its bolted back?

patience is not my strong point and doing little bits every day took me best part of 2 weeks to do the intake on my 16v

I think that explains why my inlet manifold hasn't been fully done, they started the throat sections but gave up.

Thats an amazing job, would never have thought that possible to do.

Thanks guys - maybe one of the mods can move this over to the guides section ?