I'll try to make this short.....
When I bought my slightly used dyna last August the seller, "did me a favour", and washed it and let it dry in full sun. The water was from his well as he lived on an acerage. The water is, "hard", with a lot of minerals. This left the chrome and aluminum with water stains. I finally got around to polishing with some good polishing compound, a rag, and my sore fingers. I managed to get the chrome clean but the aluminum still has the water stains. It does come off with a lot of rubbing but a lot of rubbing.

I saw a kit that cleans aluminum car wheels that uses a compound and a foam ball that attaches to a drill. Will this work?

Anyone have any good tricks to clean and polish aluminum?

 

After trying a lot of products the only thing that worked for me was copper polish. Like the stuff you get to clean the bottom of a pan. Everything else just laughed at it

 

Use this stuff. It is profoundly life changing to anybody trying to clean/polish metal. I prefer the powder. About $3 for a 10 year supply........................http://www.barkeepersfriend.com/

 

I have had good luck using Never Dull and Mothers Aluminum and Mag wheel polish with the Mothers Power Cone on a drill (Cordless, electric or pneumatic) .

 

That's good stuff! Works good for polishing your automotive glass and glass stove tops too....UHhh, did I mention Glass stove top cleaner/polish? That's good stuff too! Give it a try. Works good. Then top it off with a little Semi-chrome.

Once you get it where you like it, there's some stuff out there that custom car builders use that will seal it. Can't think of the name of it rite now. But a bud of mine at work uses it. He say it last for about a year. I'll ask him tomorrow.

Hope this helps.

Best wishes....Tim(HT)

 

Yea the Mothers power ball works great. I used it on the wheels of my wife's car which had not been polished in a few years and they came out shiny as hell.
That Power ball is a little big for the uses on my bike (I only have the triple trees to polish) so I just use Mothers billet polish on a rag for that and if I keep it up it's pretty easy.

 

I have used a method for polishing the groves from machine work that produces a mirror finish and is easy to maintain and it involves wet sanding. I usually startedwith 600 grit and finished up with 2000 grit before moving on to metal polish.

You won't have to start with sandpaper as aggressive as 600. I would try 1200-1500 first. With a little wet sanding you can easily see if it is working for you.

I know it is hard to believe but this method produces mirror like results.

You can achieve the same results with polish alone but it will takes LOTS of rubbing. Either way you will be removing a small amount of metal. Thats what polishing does. After the wet sanding your finish will be very smooth but dull, any good aluminum polish will yield awesome results.

It will work. To make you a believer expreiment on something else to build your confidence. I have done it a lot so I know the results doing this can achieve.

 

I use Mothers with 0000 steel wool on my truck wheels. You might want to experiment first before hitting important areas but this will bring polished aluminum back to new.

 

**** polish, really, Google it. Bikerstuff.com

 

I've used Mothers Alum. and Mag polish with great results. I go one step further, get some Starbrite Aluminum polish ( West Marine) and it is the cat's meow protecting the aluminum from water spotting, works good on the chrome also.