cleaning aluminum intakes

[Salvatore]

Look good but I think to aluminum looking. I have an original non-dripper set on my car and they do still look original. I don't remember aluminum valve covers having a real uniform lookin sheen as the NOS ones do today. Intakes and valve covers are not supposed to look like they were touched. JMO. Old saying is.... whatever blows your dress up! Sam

[NCGuy68]

[ QUOTE ]
Phosphoric acid and Nitric acid dip is the best nothing cleans aluminum better. I used it in the manufactoring of aircraft tooling for years. You can find a local aluminum
treatment company and ask if they will dip it for you.Those chemicals
are to be handled by pros and with the right equipment. Sand blasting your intake is not recomended as it is like adding sand in your gas tank use glass.
Peter

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree, but use plastic media for blasting rather then glass or sand.

NOW...once you have that cast aluminium part looking OEM, how do you preserve the finish?

[fpcopo]

Chuck you are on the right track. All the guys (Don Dorfman, Jerry MacNeish, John the Vette injection guy in PA)that have done this in the past and do it now seem to get the same results. Dorfman started it and called it reskinning. I've had good results by cleaning the manifold really good then bead blasting it with fresh medium glass beads.After this go over it lightly with 000 steel wool. Then clean it with brake clean to get rid of all the steel wool. This burnishes it slightly and puts that nice "as cast" finish on the part. Flying "A" has a ceramic coating business next door now and Jerry Janing and I were talking about trying a manifold in their vibratory polisher to see what it would do. That manifold Chuck did looks really good and if a Wheelabrator did it maybe that is the way to go. I have often thought that the highly secret "reskinning" process was a little bit of bullshit to keep us from trying this on our own. Now as to the Edelbrock, they beadblast all their freshly cast intakes and then do the machining. To duplicate that finish you must really clean the crap out of the part and then blast it with new beads. The only drawback to this type of finish is it stains really badly and is hard to clean. If we try the vibratory polisher and it works I'll let you know. Frank

[427TJ]

[ QUOTE ]
I have often thought that the highly secret "reskinning" process was a little bit of bullshit to keep us from trying this on our own.

[/ QUOTE ]

[Belair62]

Tell us what you REALLY think Frank...aka The Original Sausage

[Charley Lillard]

Snausages......

[Belair62]

I think Frank was saying "nuttin but a big ja$off"

[RichSchmidt]

I had the intake on my race car cleaned at a machine shop.They used some kind of method that made it lok like it was Jet Hot coated.I think it was the tumble method described in the other posts.I wanted to polish parts of mine and clearcoat it as soon as it was done being cleaned,so I bought a can of carb cleaner and some engine clear coat.As it turned out,the carb cleaner smeared the finish a bit,so I didnt use it aside from on 1 of the runners.My real plan was to put a light shine on the tops of all the runners using 1000 grit paper,then clean it with carb cleaner and clear coat it.After I got it back from the machine shop,I polished the tops of the runners,and used the carb cleaner on one runner and thats when the trouble occured.I cleaned the rest with a damp cloth,then clear coated the intake.It looks very nice,and if I hadnt polshed the runners,it would have looks like an as cast intake with clearcoat on it.
Before I had it blasted,I tried carb cleaner as well as wheel magic cleaner and neither would brighten up the 20 year old Strip Dominator intake,and te machine shop shine was absolutly the best way to go.I am attanching a few pics.If you look closely,you can see that the cylinder heads and carb spacer are as cast while the intake is slightly brighter.Late model aluminum parts do have a somehwat more deep finish then original old castings did back in the day,but the comparison is still pretty accruate.

[RichSchmidt]

And another

[RichSchmidt]

One more