I am toward the end of a 2 month retina eye surgery recovery during which time I decide to do a valve adjustment and refinish all the aluminum engine covers ... plus various other mech/electrical stuff. I did a spruce up of my front forks and adjusted my valves about 5 years ago so thought why not use some of the past experience to do the engine covers since they were showing some clear coat scaling (plus some road rock nicks). Here's a summary of what I did. Removed all covers.and cleaned everything with Simple Green Pro (it doesn't harm surfaces like others). Setup strip/paint station on a 2'x4' flat metal oil drip pan on saw horses .Used stripper to get as much of old clear coat off ... used 3m purple pad to aggresively go after hard stuf while stripper was still on. Tried using a bench buffer (bench sander with buffing/polishing add on plus the various polish grit clay sticks that come with the polishing pads ... had some some success, but that clay grit seems to become adhered in soft alum finish and caused me to spend to much time trying to remediate the darn clay grit issue. Utimately I just when with wet/dry (400 thru 2000) hand sanding then buffed/polished with bench buffer and Mothers Alum Polish. Last prep set was to wash all with Simple Green Pro then wipe down with an automotive paint "pre-clean" that is some combo of alcohol and a few "enes'. Setup each piece seperately at paint station and blew off with dry rag and air. Painted 3 coats (5 min between each coat) of the SprayMax 2k Clear ... this stuff runs very easily so have to be careful about first coat. I have attached some pics of everything I mentioned here.
Pic of original clearcoat condition.
Rest of pics.
Pic of original clearcoat condition.
Rest of pics.
