hell yeah it is , if you replace all ur shine with rust , and then drag it with a rope thru a junkyard , you have my sporty . And that a mean polish on them forks now too . I wish i wasnt so lazy id try it on mine to. That coated aluminum is ugly lol.

 

I've tried Mothers, but have never thought it was all that great. I get the same results with a lot less work with Pig Spit.

 

Great post... Thanks for sharing everyone!

 

Wow! that's a long time to spend.It might take me that long doing the whole bike in the spring.As long as it sooths the soul it doesn,t really matter.Enjoy!

 

Good job on the legs..Looks great!!
I will go chrome next year I'm hoping, after I replace the stock air shocks in the 09 SG.

 

Looks great!

North Jersey has long, cold rainy / snowy winters. My old '89 came from the factory with very little chrome. Really just the exhaust, the crashbars, and the rear fender struts and the S&S carb are chrome. The rest of the sliver motor , primary, forks and wheels are factory aluminum pieces.

No way am I spending cash on Chrome for this old bike. It was well worth it when rebuilding it the first winter to polish all the aluminum. It's easy to keep up with for the past 5 years and looks good...

200 / 400 / 600 / 800 / 1000 wet sand. Then final polish with 000 steel wool and Flitz metal polish. now to maintain it, anytime I clean the bike, I just finish up the aluminum with a quick Flitzs polish job and call it a day.

 

When I had my 05, I pulled the forks and sent them to this guy to be polished:

http://www.frontrangepolishing.com/


Really nice guy, (pretty sure its a one man shop) got them back to me exactly when he said he would (2 weeks) did great work. Im not entirely certain, but I think it was only around 120 for the pair. That was 3-4 years ago though.

BTW, I've found Simichrome to work better than Mothers for initial polishing. Mothers and NeverDull work good to keep it polished, but Simachrome is the bomb for the first round.

 

Actually was hoping to a close up of the metal itself.
Don't know about going all the way up to 2000 grit though. Always though the buffing wheel did it faster than I can sand.
Know it's an older thread but I don't think it was meant to be a "chrome is better for me cuz I don't time or can't do it" thing.
Good job on the polishing but really would like a few close ups.
Stripped and polished the aluminum wheels on my truck 4 yrs ago and no problem. I wouldn't say I give a hand-job, but i wax em every so often.

 

I will hand to you guys who have gone this route!! For me,...not gonna give up riding time (even though, lucky me, ride 12 mos. a year! ) to try to keep up! Chrome hard enough to try to stay on top of here in the salt air! Can't even imagine what that would take!!