Polishing a Compressor Housing

[480sx]

If you want to do this, make sure you at least have a face mask breather and GOGGLES!

So i picked up my S258 today, and am now quite broke hehe.

I really fell in love with the look of a polished compressor housing when i had my t3/t4 and decided to keep the look for my car. I knew this would be a crap load of work, and did a bit of research to make sure my idea of how to do it would suffice.

There are many ways to do it, including completely by hand, but that method takes forever. I decided to do as much work with power tools as i possibly could before switching over to sand paper. So i started with a 4 inch angle grinder with a griding wheel. This thing will EAT some aluminum, you have to be super careful when using the grinder. I only used this to remove the majority of the big casting marks, along with the turbos branding and the wastegate source. Then i switched to a 'flap wheel' as we call them, its just a 4 inch wheel with flaps of sand paper. This is what i did the majority of the work with. The trick is to move as fast as possible, and to use as little pressure as you possibly can. Remember, aluminum is a really soft metal and if your not careful you will take out chunks of alum in a second. Your goal here is to take down enough metal to remove all the casting pits in the aluminum, so your left with a smooth surface.

This is what i started with. Ignore the piece of tape, i had to cover the CAT logo for the picture. (apparently they are really anal about their logo)



At first i was using tape to protect the polished surfaces from being scratched. Then i got the idea to use duct tape as a buffer zone between the metal that i didnt want cut up and the grinder, just in case i got wild with it. I was using three layers of duct tape, and it worked wonders. I made a few little slips that the tape stopped perfectly. Heres a few pics to give you an idea of what im talking about..





So i did as much as i could get with the 4 inch flap wheel, shown here.



This was the aftermath of the flap wheel.



After that, i switched to sand paper to get the pieces i couldnt get with the grinder. That lasted all of 5 min before i realized that it would take me.. A stupid amount of time to finish, and grabbed a Dremel tool and a collection of bits and went to work. I found that the smallest cylindrical sanding thing worked best, you will burn through quite a few of them.



So to get to this point took me about 3 hours. Gona finish the rest of it this weekend, more to come.
Modified by 480sx at 10:03 PM 5/8/2008

[DropTop240]

looking really good bro, im in the process of polishing the housing on mine also

[wagzilla260rs]

Hi there I have spent a lot of time polishing my parts on my car...I use the 3" M3 pads gray smooth and the put some Rogue brown on that same pad and then I will hit it with the wool pad on my buffer and that seems to work well.....if you get deep scarches you will spend more time trying to get them out .......so take your time use the 3M and I think you will be happy........I have been buffing for over twenty yrs.....James

[480sx]

Hey thanks for the advice man, i'll try that out. The 3" M3 pads shouldnt be hard to find. Have you had any experiance with 'Cuz' metal polish? I was thinking of using that for my final buff.

What do you use on your first steps to grind the metal down past the casting pits? Do you use the abrasive pads through out the whole process? Also what do you use to remove the big stuff, like the WG source, or the badges?
Modified by 480sx at 9:59 AM 5/9/2008

[480sx]

I think you meant 3M pads hehe, google figured that out for me.

This takes a stupid amount of time, so glad i only have to do this once. 5 hours down today. FIVE, and its still not done. I stress the small stuff, kinda a perfectionist when it comes to these types of things.

I regret using the 40 grit flap wheel, i should have used a much finer grit but the 40 was all we had. Spent at least two hours today with the Dremel working out the marks left by that thing. Doing this really makes you realize that when a place offers you a polished housing for like.. 80 bucks as i saw, its actually a damn good deal(if you like the polished look).

[j-z]

ive polished plenty of things in my life time including compressor housings.... the best way to do it is to start off with a real rough grit paper like 36 or 40 to get all the casting down. then you grab 80 to get those scratches out, then 180, then 320 or 400, then 800. after it looks like its already polished with just sanding, THEN you bust out with the polishing wheels and compounds. start off with the brown compound. this is actually a form of really really fine sanding because of the grit in the compound. it will actually take some scratches out. after that, from what i can remember, you move onto the red for the final shine. go against the way the polishing wheel is spinning to actually get scratches out, and with the way the wheel is spinning to polish.

trust me, polishing is not a quick and easy thing to do. the more time you spend sanding by HAND, the better your outcome will be. if you start grinding away, once youre down to the actual polishing process, it will def show where you grinded as it will pop out once theres a shine. it takes a while to do. took me 6 hours to do my first valve cover, and three hours for the first compressor housing. aluminum is real easy as its a soft metal. have a go at some stainless...

[DropTop240]

we need some new pics,.....is there a way to preserve the polished look to keep it from turning dull? (i was told high heat clear coat)

[twogees]

i use a poilsh called nuvite. its expensive but awesome ive been polishing aluminim for years. Its prefered in aviation for aluminum surfaces. Like said before, the more imperfections you get out with sanding and the more sanding steps you do (or dont skip), the better your project will come out.

for a real soft material to final finish or touch up, try inside out sweatshirt material.

[wagzilla260rs]

Hi there how did your housing come out lets see. I think I would have started on some thing smaller....the good thing is you can always go back and do some more.......I work at the fire department so we have lots of buffing to do.....more you can see what I was talking about you spend more time fixing your grind marks out.......just take your time maybe it takes a week or so...no big deal.....you can't use any degraser on it after you polish it ....I did my transmission head block every thing I could polish and the put WD40 sprad it off with water and then wiped it down with a clean clothe....done.......James

[480sx]

Well its not done yet but i can throw up some pics for you guys to see where im at. As of now, the last thing i did to it was spend an hour with super fine scotch bright to get it smooth. Im waiting on some polish(im going to try 'Rogue Brown' first) to come in the mail, then im going to finish the job off. I stopped counting the hours iv spent on it, the number was getting.. stupid... lol.

Honestly, if you dont invest in the right tools and equip to do this your going to waist a ton of time, like me hehe. Havnt updated it yet because i didnt really think there was much interest in this thread, and i figured id update it when i finished. Glad to see you guys saw the thread! I want to thank my boss for laying me off after a year last week, hes the one who made all this possible.

So this is the aftermath of a dremel tool with a much to abrasive sanding cylinder.. thing. I used the dremel to grind down the minor flat spots left by the 'flap wheel'. This picture looks awful, you would never guess that this project is going well at all.. Heres the pic



So i got a random idea to take a sandblaster to the housing, just to see what would happen. We run glass bead at a low psi so i wasnt really worried about it leaving anything i couldnt hand sand out. It actually turned out really well, and had some hidden benefits.



What the sand blaster allowed me to do was take some sand paper over the whole thing quickly and find the high and low spots. The shiny spots were high spots, the dull spots were low. Heres where i spent the majority of my day, hand sanding out those high spots.



Some progress... Still looking rough



At this point i started to get the bottom section of the housing pretty well, kinda like the light at the end of a lonnngggg tunnel.



This pic pretty much sums up my Saturday.. Each of those little tabs of sand paper represents about 10-15 min. On the plus side it started lookin o.k.



This is after going through 180 grit, then 220 grit, the later i wet sanded. Wet sanding kicks ***, i would recommend it to anyone trying this. Keeps the heavy metal dust down, your sand paper alive, and is easy to clean up. If you dont wear some kind of respirator when doing this your an idiot, and you will shorten your life span.



After that i took the finest grit scotch bright and went over the whole thing to get the bigger scratches out. This is where the project is stalled now, im waiting on some advice and polishing compound.



So im pretty damned happy with the results so far. More to come

[krazydriver]

nice job man!

I had the same fun when i polished my intake manifold. Always remember though wet sanding FTW!!

[WDRacing]

Well done sir

[wagzilla260rs]

WOW!!!!!!!! nice good work.....now what do you have to buff it??? you need some thing that will spin fast ....for right now I would use mothers and just work a small spot I got with my bufferI would be done in twenty minutes but I have lots of money in my buffers you can buy one that hooks up to your drill and just take your time just keep your pad clean so you don't get any scratches.... and we want to see more pic's.....James

[motoman399]

dude looks good. its going to be baller. i bought a kit like this one

it works good i got it at harbor freight tools. i dont know if you have a harbor freight where your at. but make sure you dont use high speed. it will heat up the metal and the compound wont work right.

[480sx]

Hah you guys are going to hate me for this, im not to thrilled about it either.

Its basically expressed like this....

Getting my car running > Polishing the compressor housing

Hehe im just slapping the thing back on there, i got all the parts i need to finish my build except some stupid rare silicone couplers. I might have the time to finish the polish at the beginning of next week while im waiting for the couplers to come in the mail, but im not sure what my new jobs schedule will look like. Gotta make some money instead of spending it. Im def going to finish the housing within the next three weeks though.

Im going to get some 'Rogue Brown' and use that. Ebays got some great lookin kits for pretty cheap that i might try out.

Moto thats a really nice looking kit, i myself need to pick up some clean polishing wheels. I have the small ones for the dremel, but dont have any of the bigger ones that havnt been abused already. Iv got a harbor freight, pretty cool company.

[wagzilla260rs]

Dude you are so close to being done!!!!!!!

[motoman399]

hell ya harbor freight is the place! lol i go there for a lot of things. there air tools work great

[ken240sx]

AA is for quitters...and judging by the natty light you're not a quitter....so why quit on the polishing when you're so close?

[480sx]

Hehe, well the thing is is that i dont really have the right tools to get a mirror finish. I need to go up to the automotive store and pick up some 400-600-1000-2000 grit. Then i was going to switch to polishing compound, theres a kit on ebay with all the cloth wheels+polish i need im going to scoop up.

Not quiting by a long shot man, just gotta have priorities.

[j-z]

looking good on the sanding part. you really dont have to go as high as 2000.... i leave my shlt off at 800.... you dont really need and 'special' tools. all you need is sandpaper, that kit from harbor freight (which is where i got mine at years ago), and a drill, or air tool to spin the polishing wheel. lookin good so far though... i polished everything i could on my s14... not the case with the s13 lol. too much work!

[480sx]

Bought a kit with polishing compound before ebay turned into garbage.

So im gona wait till that comes in the mail and finish the rest of it.

[motoman399]

i polished everything i could on my s14...

pictures??? planing on doing this to mine

[j-z]

heres a quick pic i found for now...



only thing i didnt polish that couldve been done without looking retarded was the intake mani (prob 12 hours of work), and the compressor housing on this turbo.

i went as far as doing the injector caps and using stainless hex head bolts instead of those phillips screws that are easy to strip. polished my hks racing bov too, and the lower water neck. in this pic my koyo isnt installed yet, but that set everything off....

[jt15833]

natty light is the nectar of gods

[ken240sx]

more like the nectar of college students....newcastle is the nectar God

[wagzilla260rs]

I must say I wish you lived closer to me I would do it for free!!!!!! Just becouse it's driving me crazy that it's not done. tell me what tools you have and we will make your tools work!!!!!!!! they have a buffing wheel that go's on your grinder and you are there and if you don't have any buffing compond use toothpast ok ok that's for hard times what do you think you need??????

[480sx]

Lmao be easy man, thanks for the offer(kinda offer, heh). I got a kit coming in the mail, and my build has been delayed.. again... Wont get the car running again by next week. Seller sent me the wrong piece of silicone, and i have a bad injector thats spraying mass fuel and washing one cylinder wall out.

I think the kit should be here friday/saturday, so if things go as i plan, i should finish the job this weekend.

Nadi is delicious

[480sx]

My kit came today, so i went ahead and spent the last 4 hours with the it and my compressor housing. I gotta say, this polishing compound is amazing. It blew me away at how well it worked.

This is the kit i got, i would highly recommend it. http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors...76292

30 bucks shipped, comes with three grits of polish. Basically, course, medium, and 'fine'. The wheels were high quality, and work beautifully.

Heres everything that came with the kit, and my housing.



This is after 4 hours with the first stage polish and those two wheels.



Its difficult to get all the polish off, i need some micro fiber cloths to do it. Normal cloth shop rags scratch the finish, as i learned quickly. The reason its splotchy in areas is because there is still a trace amount of the polish left on the housing.

[motoman399]

ya man hit it with the fine polish now and it will look tittys

[WDRacing]

Brake cleaner FTW when removing wax buildup etc from nooks and crannies. Harbor Freight had a crazy sale on Micro cloths awhile back...bought a dozen myself for various things.

Off topic, I got a Microfiber bathrobe last year for Christmas...I'd wear only that if I could....forever.

I think I'm just gonna sand my housing a bit then have it powder coated.

When I was younger and had minimal cash for beers, I was a Bush guy. I have since sworn off cans though...so cheap beer doesn't work out for me so well.

WD