I've been buffing a lot of parts on my bike. Between stripping and a fabulous shine is a lot of sanding. (Wet sanding, of course.) When you look closely at the parts you see there are some areas Suzuki didn't bother to put a nice finish on.  No amount of buffing will make those areas shine like chrome. So you need to sand them. (You might even need to do some grinding.) And to make sure everything looks the same, you need to sand everything.

Depending on the condition of the part, you might need to start with as coarse as 180 grit then work your way up to 220, 380, 400, 600, 800, 1000 and 2000. Once you get the uniform milky finish, then you can go to the buffing wheel.

You'll need buffing rouge, also called jeweler's rouge. Google it and you'll find all the sources you need. And you can probably find detailed instructions online, too.

Here are some before/after shots of my buffing. These haven't been on the wheel yet. I just hand rubbed them with some aluminum polish.

Mothers aluminum polish. Do as above if it is really scaled/pitted. The aluminum polish will not 'yellow' on the cases from heat either.

A cotton wheel & a couple O bars of compound cot about 6 bux @ Harbor freight.

I have polished most of my casings and they look as good as chrome. I do not clear coat them because it gives it a milky look. Parts will stay shiny for months and all it takes to bring back the shine is a little polishing by hand with a metal polish and rag. maybe takes 5 minutes per casing.
I agree you have to use sand paper to sand the rough areas that suzuki forgot to smooth out but instead of sandpaper I use these sanding blocks you can buy anywhere. They come in fine, medium and course. They work great because they are flexible and get down in all the grooves. After stripping the casing of the clear coating I can now polish a large part in a hour or so and make it look almost as good as chrome. You can read a newspaper off the reflection of the finish. The buffing wheels and rouge can be bought in most hardware stores. I get mine at Harbour Freights. All for under
$20.

grc-27

Ok thanks.  I don't know where to get this GRC-27? I think that's what was mentioned.  I went over to Castle I thinks that's the name and they have some aluminum polishing kits and I got some of their buffing rouge for aluminum.  It's in the mail I guess.  Thanks for the tips.  those foam emery boards will work nice.

JohnBoy wrote on 02/24/11 at 04:33:29:

I use those all the time,Their good for polishing the frets on guitars.Plus other metal things.