Polishing alloy parts, do I clear coat also.
 

I'm working on rebuilding an older bike and want to polish most of the alloy parts. If I want to keep them shiny should I coat them with a clear coat or something else? Or just leave them and polish everything every so often. Should be a mainly fair weather bike, but on occasion may see some occasional wet days.

Thanks

I just wax my polished parts and clean and re-wax as needed.

Polish them once in a while. It's no big deal. I have five bikes with lots of polished parts and I still manage to have a life.

Yes, wax seems to help.

Mother's Mag and Aluminum polish works great and is widely available at hardware & auto parts stores. I wouldn't recommend clearcoating your alloy parts.

If the parts are in bad shape with lots of scratches, you can sand them with wet/dry sand paper first, starting with 600 grit and working up incrementally to 2000 grit sandpaper until ultra smooth, and then finish with Mother's Mag & Aluminum polish (aka "the Khatfull treatment").

Ok, thanks for the info. Consensus says polish and that's it, sounds good. I was planning on using white buffing compound and maybe brown and sanding for any scratches. Any reason not to use buffing compounds?

I use tripoli compound and a spiral wound cotton buffing wheel after emery paper and 0000 steel wool.

Only on clear anodized parts, wherein you'll remove the anodizing by doing so.

-Kurt

Which type of parts are usually anodized and what's the easiest way to tell?

Start with a mag cleaner - like Mothers - and rub. If your hand, towel, etc turns black and the part is shinier, it's not anodized. If it's anodized it will not polish up.

Just have the parts chromed.

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