If some of you will recall, after hurricane Katrina flooded the city of New Orleans, I got a set of exhaust tips off of a friends 2005 Grand Prix that had been destroyed by the waters. I finally got around to polishing one of them up today to put onto my '01 Malibu.

I started by sanding everything down with 150 grit sand paper, my dremel tool equiped with a 60 grit sanding drum and a metal file (for the riased lettering on the bottom). I used the dremel to knock down all the rough surfaces and get the aluminum somewhat smooth enough to sand. The file came in handy to level out all the raised lettering that was cast onto the bottom of the tip, that would have taken forever by hand. Once the tip was reletively smooth, I began sanding by hand with the 150, then 250, followed by 350 & 400 wet sanding. Once sanded smooth, i broke out my bottle of Blue Magic Metal Polish and a few old rags and began rubbing away. I then decided to try something else (out of boredom) and grabbed the Dremel with a cotton wheel. Using the cotton wheel and the blue magic, I polished until I was happy with the results. The exhaust tip came out pretty nice, there are still some scratches on it, and it doesn't look quite like Chrome, but I am happy with what I have, heck, it is going on my daily driver, lol.

The polished tip next to the untouched tip:


The 2 tips again:


The polished tip:


Chris

Edit: Doh, why did I put this in the Garage Forum??? Meant to go in the General Section.

I was wondering if your garage was carpeted!

LMAO.

Nah, brought the parts inside for the pic, didn't feel like taking the camera outside.

Chris