Polishing Tailpipe

[Joel_MD]

Has anyone ever tried to polish the last few inches of a stainless steel tailpipe? I`m not talking about bringing the shine back to a factory polished tailpipe tip. I mean can you bring a plain stainless steel pipe up to a respectable shine with a few grades of sandpaper and some metal polish? My wife`s 2006 BMW 325i has a short double tailpipe coming out of the muffler, and I`m wondering how shiny I could make it.

[20jettatdi03]

i`m not sure but i did buy the tips from BMW for the car (07 328)and they make a huge difference but they are a bit costly, $70 if i remember correctly but installation is a breeze

[imported_Totoland Mach]

Sure you can...I do it all the time!



Use either 2000 grit wet/dry paper soaked in a metal polish (Brasso is good) or #0000 steel wool the same way. Depending upon condition, you`ll bring them back to OEM look in a few minutes.



Here is an X5 4.4i set of tips that I recently did:



http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o212/Totoland/05%20X5%20Sterling%20Gray/05X5Sterling_ExhaustBefore.jpg



http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o212/Totoland/05%20X5%20Sterling%20Gray/05X5Sterling_Exhaustafter.jpg



http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o212/Totoland/05%20X5%20Sterling%20Gray/05X5OutsideRear_Licorice.jpg



Easy, fairly quick, and it will last quite a while.



Toto

[Joel_MD]

Sure you can...I do it all the time!



Use either 2000 grit wet/dry paper soaked in a metal polish (Brasso is good) or #0000 steel wool the same way. Depending upon condition, you`ll bring them back to OEM look in a few minutes.



Here is an X5 4.4i set of tips that I recently did:



Easy, fairly quick, and it will last quite a while.



Toto



Thanks for the idea and those X5 tailpipes look good, but they appear to be the type with a roll-formed lip and polished at the factory. The ones on my wife`s car are just plain pieces of 2" thin wall tubing, sawn at a 90 degree angle. I assume they are stainless steel, probably a cheap alloy like T409. Will they polish up as nicely as yours?

[imported_Totoland Mach]

Joel: they should do fine. I just did an X3 with those same pipe tips as you describe. While they didn`t have a high gloss like polished stainless, they looked "clean"...that`s the effect I was trying for.



Toto

[Can You Hear Me]

I wet sanded from 1000 to 1500 ect.. up to about 3000 then I polised with a 3 inch green lake pad with my PC with Mothers polish. Worked great on a friends s2000

-Nick

[itb76]

I never tries wetsanding but Mothers mag polish does a very nice job. The car is quite new, how bad can the tips be? If they`re really bad try some Bar Keepers Friend first. If that doesn`t cut it you`ll have to wetsand like Toto suggested.

[thump_rrr]

Thanks for the idea and those X5 tailpipes look good, but they appear to be the type with a roll-formed lip and polished at the factory. The ones on my wife`s car are just plain pieces of 2" thin wall tubing, sawn at a 90 degree angle. I assume they are stainless steel, probably a cheap alloy like T409. Will they polish up as nicely as yours?If they are 409 you will never get them to shine like a 304 stainless and they will always revert back to brown.

[rarexair]

`http://www.northamericanmotoring.com/gallery/data/500/IMG_2229remus1.jpg\r\n\r\nI have a Remus on my MINI Cooper S, when I first got the exhaust I clayed it and used a Mothers PowerBall Mini on it with the Powerball metal polish, it worked great, then I put a coat of wax on it, it looks great now!`