All-aluminum Lotus Super 7 to be detailed...please help

G

golfdude

New member
Hello everyone,

One of my customers has recently aquired an all-aluminum Caterham Super 7 and he would like me to polish the aluminum body. I am thinking of purchasing the following English custom metal polish kit:



Concours Kit



It seems to have all of the polishing liquids that I would need, but now I want to use a rotary and maybe even a random orbit polisher so that my hands don't fall from my arms. The question is, what accessories are available/suggested for polishing this metal? Search results lead me to purchase wool pads, but what kind of wool pads since there are so many varieties? What about foam pads? Lastly, to remove the polish, would microfiber suffice or should I use terry cloth?



The owner has told me that he has attempted to polish his aluminum with Nuvite products, but he has been unsuccessful at removing fine swirl marks in the finish with a rotary and then a cyclo. Thanks for the help friends of autopia.
 
Polishing aluminum can be a lot like work... Depending on how bad the swirls are, you'll probably have to wet sand the whole thing before polishing!!!
 
I use wolfgangs alum compound and fine polish for aluminum with a rotary and the corresponding wool pads. with a fine wool finishing pad it should get rid of all the swirls. I do however notice that even my softest MF towels induce some slight slight swirls when wiping the residue off, but that can depend on what exactly you are polishing.



wetsanding is good to remove the oxidation before polishing.



if polished correctly, the metal will look like chrome. I'm not sure if the guy would want that, but I think it would look badass!
 
SShine...yeah, my customer is looking for that chrome-like shine. Soooo...should terry towels be used instead of the microfiber?



What grit sandpaper would I have to use?
 
I'm not sure, I am going to try painters rags next time as they are super smooth. any decent metal compound followed by a fine polish should give you chrome like results, like such:



rim3.jpg
 
Someone did a write up about a '20s Rolls that was all polished metal. Maybe a search would pull it up, the thread was very well written and documented with pictures.
 
Oooo...thanks for the link to Dave KG's post.



SShine...I actually studied your write-up of that wheel work you posted about before posting my own question. Excellent results I must say.



So it seems that foam pads can work on this surface as well. One of the other things that I worry about is burning through the metal...would this be even possible?
 
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