[rogerwilco]

So I dropped my bike a couple years ago, and messed up my Chrome Norman Hyde Togas.
I want to tidy this up and get the bike ready to sell. I have an angle grinder, random orbit sander with pads up to about #400, A DA car polisher, elbow grease, high grit wet/dry sandpaper, and 0000 steel wool.

I mean, I've obviously blown through the chrome plating, so I guess I can't really mess it up more than it is already...
Here's what I'm thinking:

• flap wheel on the angle grinder to get the rust and deep scratches out.
• Up through some grits on the random orbit sander to smooth it out.
• Maybe #2000 wet/dry by hand
• Cut compound with an aggressive pad on DA
• Polish compound with a soft pad on DA

And I probably need to clear coat with something heat resistant, to stop it from rusting up again.

Anyway got better ideas?

 

[knifemaker]

Yeah, just sell it as is and don’t try to fix it. If the chrome is gone just let the buyer know and don’t try to deceive anyone..

 

[rogerwilco]

Oh, yeah, there's no deception going on. I always tidy things up and give a good clean and polish before I sell stuff. That's normal, right?

Anyway, it's mostly fixed already. I found that grits 80 through 320 cleaned the rust right up. The wet/dry up to 2000 smoothed things out. You can still clearly see there's damage, but it's not as dramatic as a big old patch of rust.

I'll polish out the 2000 grit scratches with some metal polish and call it done I think.

 

[knifemaker]

I wasn’t implying you were going to try and hide the damage, just that you didn’t really need to spend the time polishing out the damage as you’re selling it “as is”.
If they know the chrome is gone and it will likely rust if not taken care of periodically, that’s all that matters 👍

 

[marsmann]

Curious if you went ahead with this. While I do not know for sure, I would suspect the chrome on these exhausts to be quite thin at best. If it was just rust on top of chrome then you could use small brass brush, aluminum foil, chemical cleaners or even #0000 steel wool to remove. But your picture looks like the chrome is off flaked and peeled off completely so I fear the best you can do is clean up the rusted area and grit your way back up to polish the metal underneath. But you will wind up with a line where the chrome delaminated. Taking the chrome off completely in my opinion is not viable and obviously replating is not worthwhile if you are selling. Another alternative would be heat resistant chrome vinyl wrap. You could just do the tailpipe piece after grinding and evening out the surface below. But you would have to assess the cost effectiveness of this.