Seeing as I have a spare inlet manifold and rockercover sitting in the shed, Im contemplating adding a bit of bling to the engine bay. I have two options, and im not sure which way to go. Option one is to polish both the rocker cover (already started, comming up great) and the inlet manifold. This, I can probably do by hand with many blisters etc. The second option, is to get them both chrome plated. Now, to have them plated, would I first have to remove all of the casting marks, ie sand them down smooth, or would the plating cover over the roughness (hope that makes sense). If I went the plating, id first fill off the large casting marks. Secondly, any idea how chrome plating would hold up with engine heat? and finally, a rough idea of cost to get them done. Keeping in mind that the inlet is two seperate pieces (EL BBM). Cheers

I wouldnt chrome alloy, some have tried it on old Triumph primary, timing cases, keeps the heat in to much, but these bikes werent designed for hot places, it would reatain heat i reckon, how it would affect engine,dont know, but havent seen it done before, so maybe thats a answer.

JAYSEN has a chrome rocker cover... you can ask him about how he went about it. As for the inlet manifold, just polish it, don't plate it, it'll look tops as it is, and after a while everything gets dirty. Also chrome does hold in heat, and thats something you don't want on the inlet manifold. You want to reduce heat on the manifold.


Cheers

i would get it polished and chromed as i have done with my xr6 turbo looks the part too...

jeff

If you decide to chrome plate, and want a mirror like finish, yes you will need to smooth out the casting marks bumps etc. AFAIK chrome plating is an electroplate process and isn't very thick so wont cover these marks.

Don't know about price sorry.

See below

Last edited by Rik_Biel on Fri Feb 18, 2005 8:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Check my engine bay pic from my gallery
I can't enlarge it





I hand polished the front three runners on the inlet manifold in an afternoon

I need more time, and probably need to remove it to do it properly.

Looks good. Can I ask how you did it? Did you smooth out all of the casting marks? If so, what did you use?

Just rubbing - Started with 400 wet n dry, then gradually worked up to some 800, then some 1200 then onto polishes.

It was actually pretty easy - it would be even easier if you had it off the car - which is something I might do next time I take a decent stretch of annual leave. That's why I only did a halfassed job on the front 3 - it could be improved on a lot - and I couldn't get to the back 3 without taking it off the car.

The rough cast stuff comes off pretty quickly, just getting the 400 scratches out to give a smooth polished finish takes the time.
Believe it or not I actually found myself wondering how thin the walls of teh runners were when I started the job - wondering if I would sand it too thin in places. Silly but true.

I do have a Dremel, but I don't remember using it on this job - too fiddling for a machine