[Picture Journal] Polishing the Intake Manifold

[mikeinaus]

what about using a palm sander? should cut down the hand sanding time by quite a bit. you could also tip it on its corners to take out the dimples. assuming they arnt that deep a slight dip from sanding around them shouldnt be that noticeable.

[Inodoro Pereyra]

Any ideas about the dimples in the cast? They seem farther down, and looks like I would have to grind away a lot more aluminum to get to them. Should I keep cutting down or just polish it with the dimples inthere? I posted another pic in the 1st post. Didn't get much done.

It depends on what you want to do, and how deep the pores are.

If you want to paint it, you can just fill it up (you can use high temp epoxy), polish it and call it a day.

If you want to just polish the metal, and the pores are shallow, you can sand it down until you get rid of them. It's a lot of work, and you always run the risk of opening other pores that may now be under the surface, but, if you do it well (and if you're lucky), you can end up with a perfect surface, on the cheap.

Otherwise, if the pores are deep, or if you don't want to risk opening up new ones, the right way to fix them would be to bore a hole on each one (just deep enough so as to get rid of all the crap inside the pore), and fill it up with either a Tig or Tig weld, and then polish at will. If you can choose, I'd recommend you use a Tig.

[SuperK]

I've been incredibly busy with life that I haven't been able to work on my project.

Well, i had some time today so i got to some sanding and grinding. I believe this will be an extremely slow process, daily reports won't show much progress... I think I should just do weekly reports when I start back up on this.

[Daninski]

I see progress, just be thank full you don't have any kids yet. Spare time becomes non existent then.

[johnmx3ze]

I sanded/polished my turbo compressor and never again will i do that! its a pain in the a--!

[DeepBlueMX3]

-Hom about molten lead to fill the dimples, and then more sand?

[Inodoro Pereyra]

-Hom about molten lead to fill the dimples, and then more sand?

Lead doesn't stick to aluminum...

[RX8SE3P]

Nice thread, I am getting a curved neck manifold soon and was wondering if it was worth bothering to polish. I think I'll hot wash and paint it at best, it just seems like so much work!

[SuperK]

got a couple hours today to work on the intake again. Worked on this part:


wanted to get rid of the "fins" between the back runners, so... let's cut them as much as I can:


then get my sanding drum attached to my drill and power tool the most that I can:




Next will be dremel, file and hand sanding. Here's teh amount of aluminum I shaved off just today:

[Josh]

You have put so much time into this... I hope you get it finished soon

Looking good btw

[wertys]

i've started doing mine just like yours, lol there was a 2 tool dremel set on sale so though i'd be good. anyhow, just wondering if shaving the edges on the sides would actually make it easier to break?

[SuperK]

you do know that they make intake manifolds out of plastic now right?

I personally do not fear it breaking no matter how much material I'm grinding off. I don't believe there's much stress on this thing to warrant it being a huge chunk of aluminum.

by the way, dremel will not be enough. I like the 2" sanding drum for my electric drill. cheap replacmeents. There also is a large package of sanding drums for the dremel in teh same section.

[wertys]

Alright thanks

[SuperK]

I haven't quit on this even though it feels like I have

It was warm today, in the 60's... I felt the urge to shun other responsibilities like studying for finals for example... and get some work done.

It doesn't look like much, but I'm still removing the casting lines everywhere. I worked on the back end of the intake, on the two holes on each side of the mid-section.



Use a big file to shave down the huge casting lines:


Here's the other hole with the casting lines removed:



Closer:


The other side is the one I'm working on now. It's a LOT of metal to shave off by hand.

[kulluminati777]

This is very cool!! But WOW does it take long. I cant wait till its done. Want to do mine next Are you porting polishing the inside and knife edging as well?