What do others use to get it back to looking brand new please? Never touched mine.
@Chilli Girl Jane
I cleaned mine up and sprayed it with heat resistant silver paint about seven years ago, and replaced the OE fixings with stainless steel, still looks better than most I've seen on here. More recently I noticed that someone had polished theirs and that looked good although it likely took a large amount of elbow grease!
PS That was the exhaust manifold heat shield, the cat. Heat shield I " polished" with a wire brush on a drill and refitted that similarly with stainless fixings.
PPS It was
@Smithy that did the polishing and this should be a link:
https://www.mr2roc.org/forum/index.php?msg=821919
All sorts of combinations wire wool. Various. Autosol. Various wet n dry papers. And buckets of elbow grease.
You battle will be harder still as you would be doing it insitu.
@Chilli Girl Bit of a random.
But. Re this post.
https://www.mr2roc.org/forum/index.php?msg=822872
Might they have a heat sheild you could polish up then get your mechanic to swap over.
Only thing is does mean removing the O2 sensors. And we know how much love being disturbed.
I polished all the small heat shields around the air box etc. Some came up better that others but I think some of them are aluminium (easy to polish with some hard work) but others are steel? they must be something other than Aluminium because they have rust patches. I intend to do something about the exhaust heat shield too at some point. I agree that a hand held tool would make life easier.
ps I realised when putting them back I had polished the wrong side so ended up doing both sides.
Bead blasted the manifold heat shields when they were off, and painted them with silver high heat header paint which required baking to get the final cure. The wife allowed the use of the oven. 10 years and they still look good.
Quote from: Beachbum957 on April 23, 2020, 12:25Bead blasted the manifold heat shields when they were off, and painted them with silver high heat header paint which required baking to get the final cure. The wife allowed the use of the oven. 10 years and they still look good.
If your Wife is less understanding remember that these parts get pretty hot in normal use so I doubt that they need to be oven baked beforehand.