cleaning oxidized aluminum

[Turtleface]

You can polish off the oxidation without removing the clearcoat, but the factory clear coat (at least in two cases I've seen) tends to get ugly over time. Mine was flaking off in places, and missing good sized chunks of it on both sides of the engine. It can be hard to JUST remove the oxidation, if you're uniniated in the fine art of shining things up. Too much pressure, or too coarse a compound, and it's gone. As it's been stated by others, it's pretty easy to keep the bare metal nice and shiny without it, so long as you take the time to clean your bike properly every now and then. I think the easiest way to do it would probably be the bead blasting route, followed by a quick buff.

[Nessism]

The clear MUST come off in order to polish the aluminum. Using paint stripper will take off the clear very quickly. Sanding off the clear will work but its way more work and good luck getting into all the nooks and crannies.

For my bikes I use the heavy cutting compound with a stitched wheel for the final finish. Rouge and Tripoli compounds are very fine and make the surface too shiny in my opinion. Unless your bike is a show piece, and you like a chrome-like finish, you don’t have to go through all the extra steps.

[rudy]

The clear MUST come off in order to polish the aluminum. Using paint stripper will take off the clear very quickly. Sanding off the clear will work but its way more work and good luck getting into all the nooks and crannies.

For my bikes I use the heavy cutting compound with a stitched wheel for the final finish. Rouge and Tripoli compounds are very fine and make the surface too shiny in my opinion. Unless your bike is a show piece, and you like a chrome-like finish, you don’t have to go through all the extra steps.

I'm with Ness. I use a Sisal wheel with Emery to take it down to bare aluminum. You take the oxidization and clear off at the same time. I've never used chemical strippers as the Sisal wheel takes it off pretty quick. After everything is clean, I just get a cotton spiral sewn wheel with black emery and polish away. I don't waste my time with Tripoli or white rogue. It's a bike that gets ridden every day, and cleaned on occasion. It just has to look good, not be a show bike.

[sachsaca]

I stripped my fork legs with a laquer stripper, sanded them with a fine grit paper and polished them with a diamond lapping paste and a buffing wheel on my drill, it looked very nice. This was an older XS 650 yammy

[Joe Garfield]

Here is a pic of what I'm up against. I just tried some Meguiar's Diamond cut with a white scotch-brite. The pad turned a little grey, but no real noticeable change in the bike.

[Joe Garfield]

Trying another pic...

[Steve]

That's pretty much how the covers started on my wife's 850 a few years ago.

Just using a 6" sewn cotton wheel and white rouge (both from Lowe's) in a bench grinder, here are the results:





(before the carbs got painted)


The list of shiny stuff includes all the engine covers, carb tops and float bowls, passenger footpeg mounts and fork tubes.

.