To polish or not too???

[cabanadan]

Am getting ready to restore an old double ironhead engine dragbike and was wondering if polishing the cases (originally unpolished) was a good idea??? Will the polishing take away from it's prominance??? Anybody help???

[Jerry Wieland]

No polish!!!

[Robert Luland]

Am getting ready to restore an old double ironhead engine dragbike and was wondering if polishing the cases (originally unpolished) was a good idea??? Will the polishing take away from it's prominance??? Anybody help???

I agree with Jerry. One you’re going to ruin a piece of history and second of all your doing is reducing the amount of heat the unit can dispel. If you take a furnace filter thats pleated rather than a flat one. It gives you more surface area. That’s what all those casting bumps give ya. Bob L

[bmh]

If we put time into polishing the cases on a race motor, it was only the inside. Though I have seen some flashy guys with big budgets doll em up on the outside as well. Heat dissipation isn't that big of a concern when the motor only runs a couple minutes at a shot.

[Paps]

Polishing can reduce strength. It is like unto machining material away, yet in lesser amounts. A case is under material stresses. When you add additional machining, or in this case polishing, you actually cause the case to move about, or should I say, distort its shape. If the distortion is to great, machined original surfaces are disturbed and moved out of location. If appearance was the ojective, polishing, IMHO, should have been performed before all the machine work was done on the case in the very begining, as a raw casting. Paps

[cabanadan]

Thanks for the info.... Will not be getting them polished!!!