Alu car bonnet, polish to a shine, process help!

[knitware]

Hello.

I have ordered a new bonnet for my MX5 Mk3. It's aluminium and will arrive unpainted apart from black primer. I have a silver car and painting just the bonnet will be £250, around £400+ to blend in the wings.

What I'm thinking of doing is polishing the bonnet using a polisher, gritty polish and gradually getting to a shine.

Has anyone done this before, if so what are the steps and once done will it need sealing or left as bare aluminium? Tips, images, process help would be great!

[Alex_225]

I'm certainly no expert but if you're polishing primer I've no idea what it would take to get a shine.

The problem you'll find though whether you polish or not, is that it will probably really prone to chipping. Can't imagine just primer faring as well as primer, paint and lacquer in terms of toughness.

[AndrewEH1]

Striping the paint will be the hard part unless you have a big stock of nasty chemicals. I've used Starchem paint stripper on powder-coated bicycle frames which was a bh but primer should easier.

Alu will blacken and mark after a while if left bare, you can get metal and alu polishes to deal with that but a clearcoat would be a good option.

As for the actual polishing, I got a local guy to do it - did an amazing job of it too!

[trickywoo]

Have you thought about getting it wrapped?