Fork Polishing/restoration

[hazza]

I cleaned my forks up tonight and was so pleased with the results i decided to make a little how to.

You will need:

Wet and dry paper - 600 grit.
Autosol or similar.
A couple of micro fibre cloths.
Some patience

Optional-Orbital polisher.

So im sure we all get fed up of the weathered look forks get from riding through the winter:

https://i1239.photobucket.com/albums/ff501/harrybarfield/photo-7-1.jpg

The first to do is sand out all of the imperfections with the wet and dry and a little water.
https://i1239.photobucket.com/albums/ff501/harrybarfield/photo-8.jpg

Once youve done this the fork should look something like this:

https://i1239.photobucket.com/albums/ff501/harrybarfield/photo-9.jpg

It looks pretty standard looking but with a bit of elbow grease and time you polish it to a mirror finish. This can be achieved by polishing by hand, but its much faster if you use one of these....

https://i1239.photobucket.com/albums/ff501/harrybarfield/photo-14.jpg

Its a DAS-6 dual action polisher i had for my cars paintwork. A couple of minutes buffing with this and a little autosol at its slowest speed at first (to avoid splatter) followed by a few minutes on a faster speed gives this result...

https://i1239.photobucket.com/albums/ff501/harrybarfield/photo-10.jpg

This looks loads better and in total took around half an hour, so times that by two and in an hour your forks could look like this...
https://i1239.photobucket.com/albums/ff501/harrybarfield/photo-16.jpg

Whilst i was at it i polished some other alloy bits and bobs on my £300 quid eliminator project bike...

https://i1239.photobucket.com/albums/ff501/harrybarfield/photo-15.jpg

So there we go, hopefully that guide might be of use to some people wishing to get rid of that weathered look off their alloy!

Ta

Harry
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[jimbothe]

Nice show and tell. I would just like to add from experience that it is a good idea to spray with some clear laquer after, otherwise you will be polishing them up every two weeks to keep the same look.
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[Ichy]

Lacquer on polished parts can chip quite easily, On highly polished stuff I've managed to take the lacquer off in on piece .

A Swedish guy showed me that rubbing with ethanol created just enough of a protective layer to stop any further corrosion but it didn't reduce the shine too much. When I ran out of ethanol I used methylated spirits. It seemed to work ok for some time.

Couldn't find a picture of my ZL so it has to be a polished XV
https://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l41/marki_03/xv1000/PICT1735.jpg

EDIT
Just found one, not the best view but meh.
https://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l41/marki_03/stuff/PICT1123.jpg
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