Aluminum polishing and what to use on these tanks?

Had my tanks off during engine rebuild last August. They were trashed. Lots of deep dings. Didn’t come out perfect due to the amount of extra sanding they would have needed. Had my budget been larger I may have opted for new ones.

 

Painted tanks look nice too…….

 

Thank you, both.

 

I have to use multiple cloths to get rid of the black residue. The cloths get a lot of buildup on there so you'll end up rubbing the residue back on other wheels or tanks. I'll try to use the dirty ones to apply then use the clean ones to buff.

 

Oh yeah it's definitely better to get them spotless before polishing. That's my routine for my wheels, usually after a wash at particular truck washes.

 

been there and fought that. I can get the top half of my tanks pretty good but down where they are chipped up its hard.
sand sand sand and sand some more. last sanding pass with a minimum of 400 or 600. it takes time to get the knack for it. and I think tanks are the worst to do

 

you'd be amazed how much better you can make aluminum look just washing it good, maybe flash with acid and then use a wool buff on a low speed grinder or polisher with aluminum polish. isn't an absolute perfect mirror but for the way less work involved it does pretty good.

 

aluminum that is smooth, not chipped or pitted can be polished really easy

 

Before you start polishing with your wheel and rouge, flash with brightener. That’ll clean out the pores of the metal, which will reduce the amount of residue. You’re starting with something that hasn’t been kept up, so you’ve gotta’ get the years of neglect out of the pores. You can go to about any trailer dealer and buy it from their parts department in gallon jugs. Alternatively, you can probably search it online, find out what the main ingredient acid is, and look for it at a hardware store or someplace. Dilute it way down, as you just want to flash/clean the surface; not etch it.

Understand, that tank is very rough. A polished surface is very smooth. You’re starting with one and working toward the other, like in the picture I previously posted. That part perfectly illustrates the process. You mentioned using 220 grit sandpaper, which is incredibly rough. If that tank is that rough, you have a long way to go to get toward 1000-2000 grit, then, on to polishing. As I previously mentioned, I’d be very weary of weakening that tank, with so much material removal. Aluminum gets fatigued, over time, so material removal isn’t going to help with that.