Advice please fellas, the last 1400 resto I did had really bad downpipes, it didn't matter as I had a nice replacement assembly to fit, so the awful stainless ones were relegated to somewhere under the pile!!
HOWEVER, I tripped over them the other day & thought they are perfectly sound & too good to scrap, SO, I want to try & tart them up, I've done some research & it seems that soaking in white vinegar is one way to go, I've tried various wheels on the buffing machine with limited success.
Anyone here had them this bad & managed to revive them??
Picture is how the bike was when I got it.
Try some Solvo Autosol on a green pot scouring pad :onya:
re chrome or powder coat, shame to see them go to waste.
I had a similar mess and I cleaned up with Astonish Oven cleaner - good stuff and not too harsh on the steel - use it with stainless steel wool and a pot scourer and theyll come up as good as new
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Astonish-Oven-Cookware-Cleaner-500g/dp/B000TBK7PI
Surprised you have had trouble with using buffing wheels Lawrie, as usually that does the trick.
As Del says, or, I use Belgom Alu, applied with rough stockingette I obtain from Halfords
Be careful using the green scouring pads, they will scratch the shit out of the pipes, better to use the white non abrasive type.
Check out my bike thread in members rides. Polished with Various grade discs. Came out great.
Quote from: VladTepes on Monday, 13 February 2017, 09:08 PM
Check out my bike thread in members rides. Polished with Various grade discs. Came out great.
In a word, WOW.
Mightily impressed with that, when you say, 'various grades of discs', what discs are you on about, I have a selection of soft & hard MOPS & brown, white & blue soaps, but none seem to make much difference to the tarnished S/S, and solvol simply shines the brown. :grin:
I use a 3hp buffer that CANNOT be stopped, so 'lack of pressure' aint the problem!
The one pipe I've tried is a bit 'sorta-shiney' -ish, but I can't seem to make it much better, so I'm definitely doing something wrong!
BTW, I've done a lot of ALLOY polishing & had no trouble at all with that.
I'll grab the details for you tomorrow my time :) edit: see below.
Yep it's an entirely different kettle of fish compared with alloy....
I used polishing discs like these for an angle grinder to polish those headers and exhaust pipes.
http://www.toolking.com.au/search.php?Search=&search_query=polishing
These things are pretty much a kitchen scouring pad on a grinder wheel but more industrial.
Use your best judgement when it comes to grades. Maybe try a finer one and if results aren't what you want then try a coarser one and go back from there...
Essentially to get rid of all that road grime etc you are sanding it with increasingly finer grade grit discs (you don't use compound with these) and after you've cleaned it all up THEN that's when you start attacking it with pads and compound.
There's a lot of shit to shift so if you start with traditional soft pads and polishing compound you are on a hiding to nothing.
Do take care to control the piece and grinder well so as to not damage the piece or have things fly off into space... those discs spin quickly. No need to apply much pressure, let the tool do the work.
Once I'd done as much as possible with the angle grinder I did the finicky bits (around the hooks etc) with a dremel and suitable polishing pads/compound.
Scotchbrite wheels are the way to go. I only use the 25mm wide ones but use a couple of grades. Finish with mops of course.
http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/3MIndustrial/Abrasives/Products/~/Scotch-Brite-Multi-Finishing-Wheel?N=7581697+3293242505&rt=rud
Quote from: Snapey on Tuesday, 14 February 2017, 04:47 PM
Scotchbrite wheels are the way to go. I only use the 25mm wide ones but use a couple of grades. Finish with mops of course.
http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/3MIndustrial/Abrasives/Products/~/Scotch-Brite-Multi-Finishing-Wheel?N=7581697+3293242505&rt=rud
Absolutely agree Pete - just have to be careful about grade that you don't go too aggressive :onya:
(just thinking if some look for 3m Scotchbrite wheels, they may not realise that there are different grades, as well as sizes and widths).
These are great for getting lacquer off cases and fork sliders as well.
Great, thanks lads, I knew you lot would come up trumps, BTW, I've seen these things before, but never even thought about them regarding the pipes cleanup.
I'm off to buy a selection.
Watch this space. :grin:
This was a stainless system I polished for a mate of mine. I used various polishing mops and grades of compound to get them like this.
Took me about 2 hours from start to finish.
Wow Froudy !! so is it the same to polish fork legs ? do I need to remove them? :smile2:
Not quite the same notty, as cans are stainless, fork sliders are alloy so you would use slightly different mops and polishes, but the process is much the same. I'm happy to detail it for you if you really want to have a go yourself......
To be perfectly honest, unless you are going to do a lot of polishing, its cheaper to get them done locally, as investing in the materials necessary can be a bit of an outlay - not stupidly so for the amateur, but still substantive, circa £100 for a decent powered grinder, then the mops, soaps etc. Depends how much you really want to mirror polish things
Quote from: froudy on Tuesday, 14 February 2017, 08:09 PM
This was a stainless system I polished for a mate of mine. I used various polishing mops and grades of compound to get them like this.
Took me about 2 hours from start to finish.
That is also impressive, I have a 3hp buffing machine & hard & soft mops, but what mops exactly did you use?
I use this company Lawrie..
http://www.thepolishingshop.co.uk/
I start off with a sisal mop, then once I've done the initial once over with grey compound I go over to a white close stitch mop with green compound. Then it's onto a G quality loose unstitched mop.
I finally finish with a soft cloth and Belgom Alu metal polish by hand.
Stainless is relatively easy to polish as it's a "Clean" metal. Aluminium however is anything but clean to polish , and you'll end up black!!
Im really not one for polishing but when something is really bad I have used these on my angle grinder - doesnt get into the wee tight spaces but gets the job done to a standard that I can the n use a mop
I know that this may be sacrilege to some . . . Sorry :whatever:
the green one is a scouring disc and gets the metal to a cleanish state
the white one is a cotton type material (gets everywhere) and I use this with a green polishing compound
I wonder if mine are too far gone, or I'm not trying enough, this is after an hour, but with mops only, as I don't have the scotch types yet, but is mine any worse than you guys, as mine look to be actual corrosion.
Is it actually pitted Lawrie?
Yes, I believe it is, not much or very deep, but where i've REALLY buffed hard & made it shine (a bit) its come up slightly 'rippled' as though it was in fact pitted a bit.
But since I've not yet got anything abrasive yet, maybe a good old scouring of the surface might give a basis for polishing, woja-fink?
Indeed it might buddy, it's like with all polishing, you do what you have to to get rid of imperfections then reduce down the "scratching" by using appropriate mops and soaps to shine the surface up.
You might want to try Black Metal Polishing Compound using a Sisal Buffing wheel - maybe a 4" wheel would be the optimum. Black is used for first cut and flattening on hard metals including steel and stainless steel, then follow up with green using a colour stitch buffing wheel (4" again), followed by White on a loose fold wheel - Black/Green/White are all for the harder metals, whereas Brown / Grey / Blue are for the softer alloys.
Have you tried the harder soaps - starting with Black could just shift that anyway (perhaps)
Thanks for the info,
I have brown, blue & white soaps only, plus hard & soft cloth wheels, the shopping list grows. :smile2:
Quote from: lawrie on Wednesday, 15 February 2017, 02:25 AM
Thanks for the info,
I have brown, blue & white soaps only, plus hard & soft cloth wheels, the shopping list grows. :smile2:
I'd grab a bar of black polishing soap and try that in the first instance Lawrie, that should take it off :onya:
Lawrie I definitely think that's saveable !
OK, I'll give it a go a bit later on as I'm in the middle of making a complete seat assy for the Bonnie as well as lacing up new alloy rims/hubs & spokes. :grin:
By the 'eck missus, been at it for bleedin hours, the ONLY thing that will look it, is a fine flap-wheel, had them soaking in caustic type oven cleaner, that just made the brown cleaner!!
Scotch wheels made the brown shiny!!
But out of desperation, I attacked them with a flap-wheel, it seemed to actually remove the 'rusted' metal to reveal the pitted surface & the new underneath, trouble is now that its left grind-marks everywhere, so I might get much finer grade wheels & see how we go, at least they're becoming a bit 'metallic' now!
The actual polishing of the uncorroded surface is VERY easy, look at the tapered part of the collector-box, that came up like that in about 30 seconds on the buffing machine.
Quote from: froudy on Tuesday, 14 February 2017, 08:09 PM
This was a stainless system I polished for a mate of mine. I used various polishing mops and grades of compound to get them like this.
Took me about 2 hours from start to finish.
If you use Autosol Pickling Agent than it is 15 minutes job. So easy as is easy clean dust. :hat:
(https://gsx1400owners.org/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg11.rajce.idnes.cz%2Fd1102%2F12%2F12446%2F12446888_9561a982a095abc282f96d3022cd433c%2Fimages%2FIMG_9616.jpg%3Fver%3D0&hash=ec8094da779becd5dc64558b3157d695754faa42)
(https://gsx1400owners.org/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg11.rajce.idnes.cz%2Fd1102%2F12%2F12446%2F12446888_9561a982a095abc282f96d3022cd433c%2Fimages%2FIMG_9617.jpg%3Fver%3D0&hash=486e6f6b5d884acf997cae077cd5f41460655669)
(https://gsx1400owners.org/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg11.rajce.idnes.cz%2Fd1102%2F12%2F12446%2F12446888_9561a982a095abc282f96d3022cd433c%2Fimages%2FIMG_96241.jpg%3Fver%3D0&hash=2c0ca44e31ca3e5fe3c83d920a9e1772f73fd1df)
This was 5 minutes job. If you want extra shine than after that use Autosol Metal Polish.
Well, I got stuck-in & have spent several days on them!!
The 'brown' collector came up reasonable in a couple of hours, but the bloody downpipes, are actually corroded & pitted.
No amount of polishing or buffing with ANY wheels touched them, I had to be prepared to write them off by aggressively attacking them with abrasive flap-wheels, which of course gouged & scratched them quite badly, I then ended up with many hours on the machine, so much so that I had to wear thick welding gauntlets due to the heat generated.
This is the state of them thus far, a vast improvement, but I feel that a load more hours might not make much difference now,or should I keep on abrading the metal away, woja-fink fellas??
Also, am I right in thinking that they 'brown' quite quickly after polishing? Never had stainless pipes before.
:imrgreen have to say that's one great job I would of thought they were past the sell by date but goes to show what can be done :worshippy:
Well its turned out to be something I cant do as good as you guys, :embarrassed:
After a week of grinding/buffing & polishing, this is only as good as I could get, & I threw-in the towel, don't look too bad from 1/2 mile away, but not any closer, went round the block a few times, cough cough, splutter, NOW WHAT??
Its amazing what a can of fuel does, runs lovely now!
Anyroadup, just as I suspected, they've already turned 'brown' but surprisingly, I think in this case they look better, sort of matches the corrosion. :grin: