thesoundandthefury

iTrader: (3)

About 20 hours labor. I could have cut that down to about 15 but I sanded all the way to 12,000 grit to make sure all the edges and corners stayed perfect. This is a 92 Corvette model pump that originally came equipped with only one extra heater hose pipe, which I cut off and welded shut with Alumalloy for a cleaner appearance. I was a little bit nervous about doing this because of my experience with LT1 intakes and witnessing first hand their horrible casting quality but this water pump turned out to only have a minimal amount of porosity, and nothing that was bad enough that it could be seen from 3 feet away.

V8pwrdz28

iTrader: (5)

holy crap, that is awesome man, good job!

'Trust'

iTrader: (24)

Looks hawt

darrell hoagland

iTrader: (24)

that is sweet

396D1SS

iTrader: (21)

how much would you charge to polish mine? pm me

Red97Z

iTrader: (22)

looks badass, u takin orders lol

BizZzatch350

iTrader: (33)

Very bad ***, looks good!

transam5.7lt1

iTrader: (18)

Too much time on your hands.....??? j/k, that looks great!!!!!

DeltaT

iTrader: (5)

12000 Grit?

Are you sure it wasn't 1200?

Looks nice anyway, just curious about your number.

Jim

thesoundandthefury

iTrader: (3)

Nope, 12,000. I use a special type of sandpaper called "Micromesh." It's killer stuff. They originally developed it to polish the lexan windows on airplanes. In this particular line of sandpaper, the grit starts at 1,500. You can use the 12,000 grit stuff to polish the lenses on your glasses, it's that fine. Also, the distinction of referring to it as sandpaper is a bit of a misnomer, because the backing on this stuff is actually a finely woven cloth substrate that has a feel similar to silk, and the beauty of this is that you can make it conform to complex shapes and sharp angles pretty easily. It really saves the fingertips when you're sanding out tight crevices.

Thanks for all the positive feedback guys. Much appreciated.

ToxicFormula

I want one

My1st Truck

iTrader: (8)

Holy ****! I just painted a smiley face on mine...That looks ******* Pimp!!

DeltaT

iTrader: (5)

Good info on the 12K grit, but why not just use a (much cheaper) rubbing or polishing compound and cloth wheel?

Jim

buffman

iTrader: (9)

Clean

thesoundandthefury

iTrader: (3)

Oh yeah I buffed it with wheels and compounds as well: spiral and loose cotton wheels on the entire pump, and sisal on the cover to knock down the roughness in between the fins.

I've got about 4 years of polishing experience under my belt so far, and one thing I've learned from dealing with parts that have alot of varied and/or intricate surface patterns is that it's very easy to miss sanding out scratches from a previous grit down in all the nooks and crannies. (The eye has a tendency to focus on all the wide, flat spots.) So there's always the likelihood of having to "go back to the drawing board" after revealing all of the scratches you missed when buffing. In this case, because there are so many edges and corners, I went extreme overkill on the sanding to make sure all the scratches were gone before taking it to a buff. (The micromesh brings the finish to a somewhat cloudy mirror, but bright enough to see any and all sanding imperfections.) It's by no means necessary to go to this extreme to get good results, I mean I could have stopped at 600 grit before I took it to a buff, but like I said I wanted to avoid the risk of having to go back and re-sand if I had missed anything. I have nightmares about stuff like this, lol.

DeltaT

iTrader: (5)

Have you experimented with any of the acids that can save a bunch of time on the rough stuff? I'm not sure how dangerous they are for home use, though.

Jim

thesoundandthefury

iTrader: (3)

Nitric/phosphoric acid. (Bright dip.) It's really not well suited for anything outside of industrial applications. It gives off some nasty fumes that can cause cancer. From what I've heard about it, if you can get the chemistry right it works very well. Maybe in the future...

J_BAT

wut exactly did you do, just sand it? or wut do you do after you sand it, i could do some work like that, ill be losin my car for about 6 months. my license will be suspended for a 113 in a 65 and a 67 in a 40. when im already on defferd judification or somethin like that

thesoundandthefury

iTrader: (3)

Here's a nice tutorial on how to polish aluminum:

http://www.eastwoodco.com/jump.jsp?i...8&iSubCat=1445