Polishing...My plan was to polish all of the aluminum on the bike, until the day I started. The first few sessions were brutally slow-going, because I wasn't prepping the piece right. After I developed my own little method, it actually went very quickly. Here's what I ended up doing:
1. Clean the entire piece thoroughly with concentrated Simple Green, until no more dirt will come off of it.
2. Wet sand starting with 600 grit, (make sure to get all the factory clear coat off in this step), then go to 800 or 1000, then 1500. I stopped at 1000 grit- half out of hastened laziness, half because I didn't necessarily want a super-chromed mirror finish, just nice and buffed.
3. Polish on a spiral sewn wheel using white rouge compound. This is where you see the prep work really pay off. Once you have wet-sanded (which really doesn't take that long), it just takes some firm pressure against the wheel, and it polishes almost instantly.
My old camera was giving me problems during much of my build, and I wish I had more pictures. Here are a few....
Before:
After:
