Polishing Tailpipe

[Joel_MD]

Has anyone ever tried to polish the last few inches of a stainless steel tailpipe? I'm not talking about bringing the shine back to a factory polished tailpipe tip. I mean can you bring a plain stainless steel pipe up to a respectable shine with a few grades of sandpaper and some metal polish? My wife's 2006 BMW 325i has a short double tailpipe coming out of the muffler, and I'm wondering how shiny I could make it.

 

[20jettatdi03]

i'm not sure but i did buy the tips from BMW for the car (07 328)and they make a huge difference but they are a bit costly, $70 if i remember correctly but installation is a breeze

 

[imported_Totoland Mach]

Sure you can...I do it all the time!



Use either 2000 grit wet/dry paper soaked in a metal polish (Brasso is good) or #0000 steel wool the same way. Depending upon condition, you'll bring them back to OEM look in a few minutes.



Here is an X5 4.4i set of tips that I recently did:

Easy, fairly quick, and it will last quite a while.



Toto

 

[Joel_MD]

Sure you can...I do it all the time!



Use either 2000 grit wet/dry paper soaked in a metal polish (Brasso is good) or #0000 steel wool the same way. Depending upon condition, you'll bring them back to OEM look in a few minutes.



Here is an X5 4.4i set of tips that I recently did:



Easy, fairly quick, and it will last quite a while.



Toto

Thanks for the idea and those X5 tailpipes look good, but they appear to be the type with a roll-formed lip and polished at the factory. The ones on my wife's car are just plain pieces of 2" thin wall tubing, sawn at a 90 degree angle. I assume they are stainless steel, probably a cheap alloy like T409. Will they polish up as nicely as yours?

 

[imported_Totoland Mach]

Joel: they should do fine. I just did an X3 with those same pipe tips as you describe. While they didn't have a high gloss like polished stainless, they looked "clean"...that's the effect I was trying for.



Toto

 

[Can You Hear Me]

I wet sanded from 1000 to 1500 ect.. up to about 3000 then I polised with a 3 inch green lake pad with my PC with Mothers polish. Worked great on a friends s2000

-Nick

 

[itb76]

I never tries wetsanding but Mothers mag polish does a very nice job. The car is quite new, how bad can the tips be? If they're really bad try some Bar Keepers Friend first. If that doesn't cut it you'll have to wetsand like Toto suggested.

 

[thump_rrr]

Thanks for the idea and those X5 tailpipes look good, but they appear to be the type with a roll-formed lip and polished at the factory. The ones on my wife's car are just plain pieces of 2" thin wall tubing, sawn at a 90 degree angle. I assume they are stainless steel, probably a cheap alloy like T409. Will they polish up as nicely as yours?

If they are 409 you will never get them to shine like a 304 stainless and they will always revert back to brown.

 

[rarexair]

'

\r\n\r\nI have a Remus on my MINI Cooper S, when I first got the exhaust I clayed it and used a Mothers PowerBall Mini on it with the Powerball metal polish, it worked great, then I put a coat of wax on it, it looks great now!'