Rocker cover refurbishment

The place to pick up tips on bringing that showroom shine back to your E30.

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johnt0709
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Post Wed Sep 30, 2009 11:03 am

Wondering what is the best option to restore the rocker cover to the original factory finish - gold coloured material is flanking and it looks pretty naff.

Anyone tackled this - got any pics?
poolnoodle
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Post Wed Sep 30, 2009 12:21 pm

gold coloured material
I thought all rocker covers were plain alloy? Never seen a gold one, maybe a few originals were black (sport?)
'83 Bronzit 323i (mmmm, chrome)
'74 Polaris 2002 (mmmm, retro)
'89 Delphin 535i (mmmm, waft waft)
d6dph
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Post Wed Sep 30, 2009 12:27 pm

The gold coloured stuff is the lacquer that has discoloured over the years.
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toby
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Post Wed Sep 30, 2009 12:37 pm

Image

There are a few threads on how to do this but I can't find them at the moment.

It takes ages of rubbing with fine wet and dry paper, application of metal polish with a drill attachment like an arbour with a polishing cloth on it and a bit of engine lacquer and a final polish.
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johnt0709
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Post Wed Sep 30, 2009 1:25 pm

Toby - looks good, just realised that the throttle body on mine has discoloured as well :( any threads would be great.
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toby
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Post Wed Sep 30, 2009 3:34 pm

It is worth having a spare rocker cover as it it took months of occasional sanding by hand to get it to a smooth finish. My throttle body and inlet manifold cleaned up a bit with intensive screenwash used neat as I didn't want to remove them.


Do a search for refurbishing rocker rocker cover - or some similar wording.

Edit: rather large avatar picture there. Some resizing needed :D
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johnt0709
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Post Wed Sep 30, 2009 3:42 pm

thanks - you caught me inbetween photobucket resizing - now too small :x
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-ollie-
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Post Wed Sep 30, 2009 3:47 pm

I had the cam cover on my car powder coated black, then took 0.2mm off the lettering in a CNC mill at work.

Before
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After
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Ollie
johnt0709
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Post Thu Oct 01, 2009 3:56 pm

nice
bobbin1982
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Post Thu Oct 01, 2009 7:47 pm

The M Power looks fantastic....

My inlet was yellow and i just used a small wire brush on mine and it came up a right treat

Then i bought a new rocker gasket and took my rocker off and wire brushed that too
Then sprayed it black and laquered then sanded the letters and lines down...Looks a lot better
Driving my digger!!!!
cliffybabe
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Post Thu Oct 01, 2009 8:14 pm

Highly polish it

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Considering Selling the Cabby, looks like its gonna go
Cloggy Saint
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Post Thu Oct 01, 2009 8:17 pm

Image

:D
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grantfk10
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Post Sat Oct 03, 2009 1:12 am

datourer wrote:Image

:D
:cool: :cool: :cool: