elbeee964

An easy winter project is polishing the old stainless exhaust tip.
Takes about an hour if you're hurried -- but I didn't hurry because I found it a nicely Zen-type experience.
First & foremost -- take it easy on yourself -- for a little job like this, it's easiest with a Dremel (i.e, leave the sandpaper in the cabinet):

1. Lower the tip from the car (not *absolutely* necessary to take it off car)
2. Hit the tip's grime with a Dremel's "Scotch Brite" wheel
3. Polish it to chrome finish with Dremel felt wheel 'dressed' with #6 high gloss polishing rouge. (I bought my #6 at Lowes... look around the tool department's hi-speed grinder supplies.)

That chrome-look will turn nicely golden after much use. The shininess is still there, only it's gold-hued from heat.
If wanted, you can do this treatment again & again to bring back the chrome-look. (Personally I like the heated-gold look.)

Oh, yeah... Much of the exhaust system (e.g., secondary muffler) is this type of stainless steel.
Just sayin'...

-Lonnie
'93 C2 (soon to be in Hampton, VA)


The usual before:


Softer Scotch-Brite wheel


Rougher Scotch-Brite wheel (use either grade -- they're just used to whip off the grime layer.)


Loosen the exhaust tip's securing clamp, drop the tip for access:


First stroke with the Scotch-Brite wheel:


Final results after felt wheels + #6 dressing. (Higher speeds are best. But this will spatter a bit of the polishing dressing. I found covering the adjacent paint with painter's blue tape eased cleanup. Or just remove the tip altogether!)


Pretty, no? The more polishing you do, the brighter it becomes.


Same treatment on good friend's (KV) RSA. Splendid vehicle.

Mark in Baltimore

Sorry for the really dumb question, but can you post a picture of the felt wheel? Maybe I have an old version, but my Dremel felt wheel is held on with some sort of stupid screw in attachment that is absolutely useless for polishing anything harder than canned green beans.

elbeee964

Mark-
Here are two shots of components used.

I originally used the screw-capturing spindle (you see holding the Scotch-Brite wheel) to hold the felt wheels.
But felt wheels wear out and unscrewing / refastening that little capture screw to that spindle is a pain in the

Then I 'discovered' the awl/screw-shape spindle. [the one chucked into the Dremel.]
Felts spin right onto it. Take care not to load them up too much during polishing or they'll spin the felt right off.
Using the smaller dia felt is the best choice for that screw-shaped spindle.
The larger dia felt gives you a faster/better polishing speed, but is more sensitive to stripped felt 'threads' on the screw-shape.

So, it's a trade-off of convenience/polish-speed/polishing quality/time: Captured vs. Screwed-on vs. Large dia. vs. Small dia.

But, there's no hurt in experimenting -- nothing applied with these tools is unrecoverable.



In the foreground are two used felt wheels. (one small diameter & one big.)

Mark in Baltimore

Thanks, elbeee. It's the awl/screw-shape spindle that I have issues with. It's just not sturdy enough to hold onto the felt pad. Use too much pressure and the pad "strips the threads" of the felt pad. Use too little and the pad is ineffective. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. I'm used to using a polishing wheel as in the picture shown below.

SO, is the screw-capturing spindle a Dremel product? I didn't see anyhting on Dremel's website.

Thanks!

elbeee964

Mark-

hmmmm...

The little machined thread 'pinching' bolt thingee, below, came with my Black & Decker dremel (yeah, I know that's mixing manufacturer names -- "Dremel's" like "kleenex" to me.) I show the 'wood-thread' awl in both only as comparison.
Below it's displayed pinching the Scotch-Brite wheel, (and my dirty thumb nail ) and disassembled.

That device you've shown is explicitly a polishing wheel.
If you have *that* hooked into your bench grinder -- forget the Dremel because you've got the tool to make this a 10 minute polish job!

I was looking to show what could be done "on the side" w/ a Dremel... and found hard felt w/ polishing dressing worked nicely.
In the end, I used what was laying about, or found laying about at Wal-Mart or Lowes.

-Lonnie
'93 C2

Mark in Baltimore

Okay, Lonnie, I see. Thanks so much for the reply!

hawk911

Nice job. I have 2 tips, and I think I'll do this over the winter. I may end up selling the spare, since I don't use it.

lunchboxbill

Are all standard tips able to be polished up like this?

Andy Roe

Yep

xeps

Decided to try my hand at this today, but using a different method. Wanted to see if I could get it reasonably shiny without breaking out the dremel.

Materials were:

Gord's polish - no affiliation - probably used about 0.5oz, most of which was because of a spill.
1 chunk of #0000 steel wool
1 dirty old rag

Started with this:



After a good scrub:



and a quick wipe down:



Took longer to get the exhaust off the car than to get this result, and I think it could get shinier yet with a bit more time. Probably invested about 10 minutes so far.

Bit of very minor pitting present, that this method definitely won't remove. Took a good bit of elbow grease, but worked pretty well for low-tech. Dirt cheap too, though I imagine mostly everyone has a dremel anyway.

V

Try Autosol, it's really the best stuff for this application. No affil.