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Hi all

I have recently had a old schumacher cougar 2 works chassis re-ground and all the paint stripped off. if you look at the pictures Ive attached the person who did this has done a good job of striping and re-grinding it but a rubbish job on the finish!! It has rough areas on it were they coud'nt get into the corners etc. Can anyone offer there services or advice on cleaning it up? I dot just want to go at it with a sander I want it to be a completely clean flat finish so I can then get it re-annodised purple.

Any help would be much appreciated
Scott

ok, for the tough corners, a small wire wheel on a dremel tool will help clean that out. If you want a brushed finish and the chassis is already pretty flat, you will need scotchbrite, and you will have to run it down the chassis in ONLY ONE direction. alternatively, you can secure the scotchbrite on a flat surface and run the chassis over it.

a typical aluminum factory brushed finish is exactly that, they use a large belt sander with a scotchbrite belt on it, and they run it over the chassis.

the key is to only move in one direction.

if the chassis still needs sanding, the same method will apply, but just use sandpaper and a block of wood or a sanding pad to sand it smooth.

I should also mention that depending on the alloy, some have a better finish than others. Also, don't push to hard with the wire wheel, it will gall the finish. Just enough pressure to take the gunk off.

If you scotchbrite it, it will never ever annodise back to how it looked when it left the factory. The damage already looks done though so you may as well go for it.

You would have been better off chemically treating it before going at it mechanically. Annodising can removed acid soaking but you local annodising people are the best to advise you!

I know back in the day when I had a team car, I used "easy off oven cleaner" and it took the anodize off real clean. Not sure if it is called the same everywhere else in the world but that is what it is called here in the states. What would be trick is to have it polished then reanodized. That would look sweet IMO.

Caustic Soda works great for removing annodizing. Also chemically attacks aluminium, so might help remove surface roughness. Don't leave parts in too long though as 10 minutes will eat away enough of a tapped hole so it no longer holds a screw thread (depending on strength of mixture). There are no tapped holes on a Cougar 2 chassis so there's no problem here.

I stripd it myself, and as Ian said caustic soda worked perfectly! that was'nt the problem! this used to be a very used scratched chassis and I sent it to be reground. As I said they did a good job of removing all the scratches and dents but not such a good job on the finish!! Really all I want to do is have the chassis completely smooth (not rough) finish so no dark/rough patches will appear when it gets re-annodised

Maybe you could hit up whomever anodised those club10 chassis pans red and purple you had a while back??

fraid not, no longer in business and they would only ever do annodsing not re-finishing

Scotchbrite and fine wet and dry sandpaper away then.

Fine grit blasting