Steve,

Perhaps the tips you have now are a bit too far gone for easy rehabilitation...and I appreciate your attempt at removing them yourself. I think that often many of us guys on the board that come from a mechanical background just assume that everyone can do the things that we take for granted (and have a complete set of Snap-on tools to work with).

For future reference, a technique I have had very good luck with after I wash the car is to clean the tips with a paper towel moistened with a bit of Simple Green; this takes at most two minutes each wash and my tips (chrome from factory motorsound option) look the same as the day the car rolled off the boat. IMHO no special effort or chemicals are needed to keep your tips looking new.

 

Couple of thoughts. Try some Liquid Wrench, a few drops should help loosen the nut. Otherwise leave them on the car and polish with Scotch brite pad/ 000 steel wool/ metal polish. Worked like a charm on my 996 and I didn't have to take 'em off. Now get back in that garage!

 

I polished mine with a polishing attachment (a wool bonnet) on my drill for the large areas and a Dremel tool for the small and tight areas. It took far less than 2 to 3 hours. Maybe 20 minutes per tip (polishing only, not removing and installing). You could do this by hand, but it would take much longer and take a bit of elbow grease. If I recall, I started by cleaning them up a bit with some really fine sandpaper before I started the polishing process.

Steve, you said you could slip $100 on your card. Try slipping a $50 power drill instead of paying a mechanic. This way you get to keep the drill.

As for them getting brown again, every couple of months I touch mine up. This is really simple. I don’t remove the tips from the car. I put a bit of the metal polish on a rag and swipe it once or twice, then move to the clean part of the rag to wipe it off. This probable takes less than five minutes from the time I get the rag and polish out of the cabinet to when I’m putting them away again.

Here are some before and after pictures. The whole process, removing them, polishing them and installing them took less than 2 hours.

Steve, perhaps a buddy or neighbor could help you remove them.

Tom
’95 993

<img src="http://boards.rennlist.com/upload/tipbefore.jpg" alt=" - " />

<img src="http://boards.rennlist.com/upload/tipafter.jpg" alt=" - " />

 

Thanks for the tips about cleaning my tips . A Rennlister has offered to sell me his Fabspeed tips for $100 (from $400) so I guess I'm going to go with these. He's kindly sending them to me, and then I'll send him a check. I appreciate the trust on this board.

I don't even have a work bench in my house to polish the ones on my car if I could have ever got them off, though I think I do have an old drill somewhere in the basement for potential polishing. I'm not really cut out for this taking stuff on my car and fixing it stuff, but I'll keep trying as the years progress. With this past experience of not being able to even get the tip off the car as the screw is too rusted and the nut won't turn, I'll just pass on this fix. Hopefully this these "new" tips will show up on my doorstep in the next week or so and I'll have gorgeous new tips.

Steve

 

Another tip about "tips". I used a cloth polishing wheel on my bench grinder, and worked from a coarse polish to a very fine polish. These are the polishes that come in bars...used for polishing metals. Took about 10 minutes a tip and they look like they are chromed. I was amazed on how well they came out. Too bad I did not take pictures.. ;-(

Oh my bolts were rusted too...I just cut them off and bought two new ones...much easier than trying to get the rusty ones off. Then again, having air tools helps!

 

Anybody have any pics of stock exhaust tips as polished as possible? Just trying to gauge how close I am to finishing or if I can keep going and get a better shine. I got the brown off of my tips but it is nowhere near looking like chrome.