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I've hear of people having good luck polishing modern japanese frames using oven cleaner to remove the original finish. Might be worth a shot. Haven't done it so I can't attest to whether it works!

I bought a can of paint stripper which I'll try tomorrow probably. I can't imagine that it wouldn't work. Oven cleaner would probably work too, but I'll report back after the paint stripper job and let ya know.

Doug, the paint remover will work best if you apply a thin coat and remove it fairly quickly. If you let it work and then dry, it actually starts to set up (harden) again. Once you brush some on, let it set for a few minutes depending on temp where you work then wipe it down and repeat. Use rubber gloves as that stuff is nasty. It is just about as easy to use a drill and fine wire brush wheel and just brush the stuff off as what you get off won't be very even and you will have to wire brush it anyway. If you do wire brush, the fine brush is necessary so as not to scratch the alumimum badly. You can basically use some Mothers alumimum polish and a buffing wheel afterwards and get a fair shine.

I'm going to give the paint stripper a go tomorrow. I bought some assorted sized plastic putty knives that I'm hoping will help getting the softened stuff off, but if all fails, I can go back at it with the 0000 steel wool. That seems to leave a nice polished finished. Then I'll sick mother's aluminum polish on it and see what it ends up like. It will end up polished, one way or another.

unless you have your engine out i wouldnt use the stripper or oven cleaner.both will destroy your rubber,paint and plastic. it impossible to not get any stripper on surrounding areas. you may get it where you want it when applying it but washing iut off you will push into cracks and crannies. ihavnt found a stripper yet that didnt involve a brush of some sort and when you use a brush you fling it everywhere.
and if you use a wirewheel even a fine one i'd suggest using 1500-2000 grit afterwards to remove the scratches b4 polishing.

I finally got around to doing this job. We had a cold spell right when I bought the paint stripper and I've waited til this weekend to get the time/weather to do it. I took the advice of several of the above posts and it worked well. I'll try to explain with some detail, hopefully without dragging this post into a major length book!

I bought the paint stripper, a set of small synthetic brissle brushes, and a set of plastic putty knives. I used the 1" brush and the smallest putty knife to do this. I spread plastic sheets over my floorboards and taped them up with masking tape to keep any splatter or dripping off the other surfaces. I found that I could have skipped this step (but never would have) as I didn't have any dripping because of the light applications of the stripper.
Here are before shots of the engine sides...




You can see the dingy areas where the laquer is coating the aluminum. These areas are where I applied the stripper to disolve the laquer.

Before you apply the stripper, you need to look at the areas you need to apply it to. It is important (says so on the instructions on the can) that you apply the stripper in one direction only, so you don't destroy the evaporating action after it is wiped on. On the right side, I figured out that I needed to brush on from the right to left to be able to reach the areas covered in laquer. Anyway, I brushed on a very light coat and watched as it bubbled up. You can tell where it is actually lifting the laquer by the bubbling effect. After a few minutes (no more than 5) I used the putty knife to scrape the area clean of stripper/laquer and wiped the knife on a rag to remove the goo. It was amazing to see the shiny aluminum immediately when I removed the bubbled up stripper. The laquer had protected those areas from tarnishing. If only the laquer had stayed clear! Anyway, I re-applied the stripper until each area was clean of the laquer. I was careful not to apply the stripper over areas where the pieces came together so I wouldn't get any stripper on any gaskets etc. I also used only light coats so it didn't try to drip or run. Once I had all the laquer removed, I used my water hose with a fine spray and rinsed the areas clean and wiped them dry. Here is a photo of the right side after the stripper before I polished and buffed...


You can definitely tell a difference.
Here are photos of both sides after I polished and buffed them...


I used 3M rubbing compound to get the tarnish off the aluminum that didn't have any laquer protecting it. Then I used Mothers Billet Metal polish with a buffer to try to get it to a mirror finish. It's not perfect, but it's a site better than before. I plan on continuing the polishing to get an even better finish..

Post edited by: fergyfer, at: 2006/03/08 11:11

duplicate, freekin same photo in all of them. Now to edit...

Post edited by: fergyfer, at: 2006/03/08 11:04

I had to upload each photo in a seperate post to get them all uploaded, then edit my original post and change the names of the photos... sorry about all the "deleted" posts! You'd think I could handle this technical stuff. I'm a sys admin for crying out loud!

Post edited by: fergyfer, at: 2006/03/08 11:17

i tryed the mothers billet polish i wasnt really impressed with it,i have better luck with regular mothers mag and aluminum polish.

I have a can of both but I figured the billet stuff would be better. I'll try the regular stuff. Thanks!

just keep on rubbing! ive got 2 full cans of the billet stuff if you like it better ill send them to ya!

Hey Wireman, you were right. I tried some of the plain Mothers Mag & Aluminum polish and it really put a shine on it. I didn't take any new pictures but it really looks good. The right side looks like a mirror. Left side could use some smoothing but it looks fine to me.