I’m curious about polishing my Weiand intake manifold. It was powder coated when I got it but now that it’s been stripped clean I’m worried that it’s too rough and porous to get a good shine. The powder coating shop chemical stripped it, they did not sandblast it. Has anyone polished one of these? If so, could you post a picture?
The areas to be Polish,(Aluminum) it will need to be sanded , debarred, the more smoother ,the faster & easier it will polish
What are your plans for the heads and the valve covers and I assume the block is Hemi Orange. I had one of mine ceramic coated by Jet-Hot which was good as it resists staining by the fuel- 97's don't leak do they LOL My other one I had all my alloy stuff - valve covers, valley cover, plug wire covers and manifold water bead blasted as the guy who does it uses some detergent stuff in the liquid and the blasted finish doesn't tend to stain from fuel or oil. Process gives a softer finish that I was after - no bling on the engine!
Are you doing it yourself ? It will come up alright but there will be a lot of pits that will not come out. I have done a few manifolds by hand, a sb Ford Weiand tunnel ram, a couple of Edelbrock triples an Edelbrock dual quad my Halibrand Q/C along with a heap of motorcycle engine covers, calipers, master cylinders etc. They all looked good when done but there are times you wish you hadn't started ! I use a piece of 5/16 alloy bar with a slit cut down the end in a hand drill with various grades of sandpaper wrapped and taped to it along with a Dremel as well. Autosol metal polish then Autosol alloy polish on mounted mops works for me. You soon learn how much pressure to apply. Please don't sand the lettering off. Good luck or sell me the manifold if you decide against it.
Milwaukee multi tool (cordless) cheap ebay sanding parts (they don’t last but are cheap) start with coarsest grit you get in the packet then go all over, change grit and continue. I’m at 800 , buffing machine next. It takes a lot of hours to do a tunnel ram but I was quoted A$2500 and that wasn’t going to happen. Would rather put that sort of money into engine parts
I have a friend who is into the polishing, he starts with carbide bits and a die grinder and moves onto sanding drums and dremels etc. You need to rig up a vacuum so you aren't breathing all the dust. Here is some of his work.
There’s another way you might think about, but I don’t recall everything I was told, so verify this…but when I had a set of headers ceramic coated in the “chrome look”, a few years back I asked JetHot what needs to be done for the intake set up for my daughters car to prep it. It’s an OT intake, but similar casting. I’m almost sure the Rep told me to wire wheel it, but damned it I can remember what he told me to use as a compound to inhibit the pieces getting blackened. He did say sanding the pieces smooth would yield the best look, sent me pics of an intake someone had prepped as if they were going to polish it, so more work for sure, but damn that intake looked nice. The ceramic chrome doesn’t have that “mirror” look to it like a polish job, but the upside is easy to keep clean. I think he gave me an over the phone estimate on the 4 pieces I wanted done around $400. Been tough to find the time to start on them with the past few years OT I’ve been on, but will be the route I take.
Will it be left like that? What will be used to keep the look as is, or will it be painted? That looks nice.
I don't know what he has planned, posted to give the OP some motivation. It takes a lot of patience to get things to that level. I have watched him doing it for 46 years. Man I am old !
That is absolutely NOT too rough to polish. Just be warned, polishing an intake is a LOT of work and takes time. I polished a SBC intake in my basement and it looked fantastic. Then I brought it outside, into natural light and I could see a ton of flaws in it. Back in for more sanding and buffing. Here's what I did ... I took apart an alternator and used the cast aluminum case to learn on. It gave me an idea what to expect as I sanded, sanded some more, sanded even more, then polished, then sanded again and again and again, then polished .... Once I got the hang of polishing the alternator, I moved on to the intake. Did the intake end up looking good? YES, great actually. Would I ever do it again? HELL NO ... I am just too lazy. Cartridge rolls are your friends ...
This is obviously not the same intake, but this wass a sand cast intake with a ruff finish for a 392 Hemi . Dad just picked this up from our polisher and it is better then new!
It can be done at home, lots of careful sanding with rolls , various grits and patience. Then polishing with several different compounds. Eastwood sells kits to do a manifold. I use there products.
My 2nd attempt at polishing an intake. It came out better than the 1st. It's an Edelbrock Performer RPM. I sanded off the performer RPM lettering, the square pad for the Made In USA placard and bored the hole for the oil fill tube to get rid of some of the "modernness". Gary
Sanding rolls are old school.... There is a better way IMO. I've been using 3" roloc 'surface conditioning' discs (AKA Scotchbrite) for years to prep aluminum for polishing. It'll be more expensive than sanding rolls, but not by a whole bunch. The time saving aspect makes it worth it to me. Here's an example... This is the start. While this is an originally polished part, there is corrosion and various nick and scratches. The top was hit with a 400 grit disc to remove a deep gouge. This is after hitting with a blue then grey disc to remove paint, corrosion and scratches. About 15 minutes. After polishing with my buffer. Total time start to finish about a half hour. If you want a mirror finish, more time at the buffer will be needed but keep in mind it'll be harder to maintain. The tools. The discs are in order of aggressiveness: brown, maroon, blue, then grey. The sanding discs are 120 and 320 grit but I use those sparingly, primarily for 'leveling' out gouges and scrapes. Note that the disc backer is cut down; that's important, it allows the discs to 'bend' into curved areas. Fresh discs will be more aggressive than used ones, and if the disc starts 'smearing' you're running it too fast or too much pressure or it's getting worn out. You'll figure it out, it just takes a bit of time. I also use a 6" disc for leveling large areas, but you won't need that for the intake. Your intake casting looks pretty smooth, I'll bet you could start with blue discs then finish up with greys before polishing. There's lots of recesses on that intake, that will be the time-consuming part of this. Buy the discs in bulk, you'll need a bunch of 'em. It pays to shop for the best price, I get mine from Keene abrasives out of Canada. A tip: no matter how hard you try, there will be places where you just can't get these (or anything else) in there to smooth the metal. I've found that scraping these areas with a sharp tool (knife, modified wood chisel, etc) works very well, the buffing process will blend it nicely. If you use sandpaper, then it takes multiple sanding to get rid of the scratches. All this applies to aluminum, steel is a different kettle of fish entirely. To get an idea what a time-saver this is, I did all of the below... ... in about eight hours. And that's not all of them; the five items that aren't engine covers are times two, I just didn't show them. Granted, these were all originally polished but several of them weren't fully polished and all needed some smoothing to get rid of scratches, pitting and gouges. My buffer is a 1.5 HP Baldor spinning 10" buffs. A smaller buffer will increase the time. You'll also need some 1/4" shanked cotton buffs to get into those nooks and crannies. This isn't really rocket science, it's mostly time... Good luck!
The polish job cost $425, but the intake needed a lot of extra work. Performance Metal Polishing did the work. His contact info is 1128 lunt ave, Schamburg IL 1(847)5441162 He is a one man show and does all the polishing for Dyers Blowers. He also restored our stainless trim to better then new condition.
I've done two tunnel rams, and one cross ram intake, and it took me probably 8 hrs. each by the time I was done. I started with Roloc discs to smooth out the as cast finish, and kept going over with finer and finer discs until it was smooth enough to polish. Then I went to hard cotton discs and wheels depending on the area and contours. Using hard sticks of polishing compound in various grades. They were white, red, and gray, and can't recall which was the most or least aggressive. But they came out nice, and cost very little, beyond the discs, compounds, and my time.
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