anyone have a trick for aluminum scratches?

[cobra girl 5]

We scratched the inner aluminum panels by the radiator. Anyone know a trick to getting them out without messing up the shine permanently?

[CobraDan]

http://www.kirkhammotorsports.com/fa...al.html#finish

[sicilian cobra]

Originally Posted by cobra girl 5

We scratched the inner aluminum panels by the radiator. Anyone know a trick to getting them out without messing up the shine permanently?

start with the list invasive sand paper(220)up to 600-800,finish with mother's polish. To minimaize scratch pattern...... sand in light cross pattern similar to an orbital sander

[cobra girl 5]

Thanks you guys. I tried to polish out a scratch on one of our first builds and it only made the aluminum shinier which caused the scratch to stand out even more. I'll try the Kirkham way. We have sand paper up to 2000 git in the shop so I'll start light and work my way up. I tried the polishing cream for plastic lens scratches but it just shines the metal. I'm going to buy a scotch brite also like Kirkham mentions. Thanks again.

[Tommy]

Thick of a scratch and repairing it this way. A scratch is a gouge in the surface that is visible to the naked eye. Polishing the area around the gouge without removing it only provides a shiny area around a scratch. You need to either fill in the gouge until it is up to the level of the surrounding surface, or you need to lower the surrounding surface until it is the same level as the bottom of the gouge. Most people don't like the idea of filling in the gouge by aluminum welding, so if the scratch isn't too deep, they'll remove the surrounding material. The common way to do that is by sanding. Use aggressive sandpaper with low number grit to remove the surface until it is level with the bottom of the scratch (i.e., until the original scratch blends in with all the other scratches left by the sandpaper. Then use progressively finer (higher number) grit sandpaper to replace large scratches with smaller ones. Finally, use polishing compounds to replace the finest sandpaper scratches with scratches so fine that they are not visible to the naked eye. This is your challenge.

[cobra girl 5]

Thanks Tommy. That sounds exactly like color sanding a paint job. I was just hoping there would be an easier way so that I wouldn't have to buff out the entire panels on both sides. I guess this will be a bigger project after all.

[mrmustang]

Get yourself a red 3M scotchbrite pad and sand in a cross hatch pattern until the scratch itself is gone, then look at the aluminum pattern around the patch area and sand in the same direction. after you get a small pattern going, you might end up using 600-1,000 grit to bring it back to looking like the rest of the panel.


Bill S.