I decided to try some home crankshaft polishing today. Many car guys know about using very fine wet/dry sandpaper with light oil or WD40 to polish up an imperfect crank journal. My cast 225 crank wasn't too beat up, but I used 3000 grit sandpaper to knock down any high spots before measuring the crank journals. But I wasn't too thrilled with the resulting surface appearance. I watched some crank polishing videos on YouTube and saw one of a guy using Simichrome metal polish on a shoelace and thought that might do. Except that I don't have any liquid metal polish. So I tried some paint buffing compound, but that accomplished nothing. Then I went into my metal polishing supplies and got out the bar of emery compound. This is meant for a buffing wheel so I melted a small area on the back of the bar and used the melted compound to coat my shoelace. I then applied some WD40 to a crank journal and polished it with my newly abrasive shoelace. Things started looking pretty good! I even tried following up with a finer compound, but I don't think it did a thing.
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File comment: After 3000 grit paper. 20210207_135312 s.jpg [ 79.79 KiB | Viewed 2635 times ] |
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File comment: After emery compound on shoelace. 20210207_135639 s.jpg [ 68.56 KiB | Viewed 2635 times ] |