What is the best way to go about restoring your valve cover?

Im not talking about polishing it or chroming it or painting it, I mean getting it to look as it did when new, a strong cleaning? With what?

I would suggest media blasting with fine glass beads.

You can see some results in my gallery.

What was the factory finish on the vlve cover? Onbiously it was better than a rough-casting liketh intake manifold, but "car show experts" will tell you that it needs to be highly polished? Some have even suggested that I polish or just glass-bead the intake so it's "nicer."

thxZ

Tomohawk,

What you do to it depends on what class the "car show experts" think you will enter. I don't know any car show expert that would tell you to highly polish anything aluminum on a stock class entry, Now bead blasing will clean up dirty parts, but you have to keep the pressure low enough not to change the surface texture of the metal.

I am getting ready to clean the Auto tranny for my 300Z, and I will be degreasing it with mineral spirits, and then brushing off the fuzz/glass beading it, and clear coating with a low sheen paint-pretty close to what I would do to restore a valave cover-except instead of clear coating, I would hit the pretty side with MAAS metal polish-not to alter the surface, but to keep coorosion at bay.

Will

Will

I was referring to a non-Z car show,like "classic car" shows which mean mostly domestic muscle cars. Even if you enter in the Foreign or sportcar class, "people" want everything highly poilished.