Practiced on an old thermostat housing. How do you eliminate the bumps and scratches? I almost got the shine i want but it reall takes a long time. What kind of system do you guys use for polishing aluminum? Here is a pic of the housing im working on. You can see more pics in my sig of the housing.

 

sand using these grits in order:
80 grit
150 grit
220 grit
320 grit
400 grit
600 grit
1000 grit
1500 grit
2000 grit
polish from there

At least thats how I polished some aluminum of mine. Looked good.

 

i dont use as many grits of paper due to the fact i use a baldor buffer and different rouges to buff with. i normally only take it to a 400 gritt wet sand and then start buffing with a cutting rouge and into a white polishing rouge. this save alot of time and fingerprints.

 

hear is a pic of my small block race motor with the brodix heads and valve covers polished..

 

Its horrible to think that someone would try to polish rough-cast aluminum by hand, you almost NEED to use a polishing wheel.

BTW, some places will laugh at you if you try to buy green or white "rouge". Rouge is the color red, the stuff you polish with is supposed to be called a compound.

 

I am new to polishing, but, what if I have a wheel to put on my electric drill? Will it not spin fast enough? I would like to some polishing under the hood, but not by hand. Any info would be great. I am not looking to win any shows or anything like that, just to have some "bling" under the hood.

 

I think I need that porsche in slammedss garage, I will gladly take that off of your hands if ya want. Nice polishing on the sbc.