Workdawg
NARWHAL
After two winters of driving my car with a coat that had a button on the sleeve, my shift knob was in DESPERATE need of some loving. The front side of the aluminum ring had been scuffed up a ton and looked really bad.
Someone on Mazdas247 had posted that he had refurbished his shift knob in a few hours by sanding it down and polishing it. I figured I'd do that same thing, it couldn't turn out much worse that it looked at the start. I gathered my supplies... 100 - 2000 grit sand paper (Home Depot had up to 800, Advance Auto Parts had 1500 and 2000), masking tape and some Mother's Aluminum Polish.
After I took a closer look at the shift knob, I realized it had some kind of scuff resistant coating on it. I masked it up and went on my way. After taking the sand paper to it I came to realize that this coating is tough as shit. You need to put some serious pressure on it to scratch it. The 180 grit I started off with was barely doing anything to it without some serious elbow grease. After about an hour and a half of beating the shit out of that coating, I ran back to HD for some 100 grit. The coating came off a little bit easier with the lower grit, but it was still a big pain in the ass.
After I finally got all the little spots of the coating removed, I went back up to the 180 grit and smoothed it out a little bit. I'm actually kinda digging the "brushed" look. My original intention was to sand it all the way up to 2000 grit and polish it to make it shine, and hopefully look brand new, but I'm thinking about sticking with the brushed look for now.
What do people think?
Someone on Mazdas247 had posted that he had refurbished his shift knob in a few hours by sanding it down and polishing it. I figured I'd do that same thing, it couldn't turn out much worse that it looked at the start. I gathered my supplies... 100 - 2000 grit sand paper (Home Depot had up to 800, Advance Auto Parts had 1500 and 2000), masking tape and some Mother's Aluminum Polish.
After I took a closer look at the shift knob, I realized it had some kind of scuff resistant coating on it. I masked it up and went on my way. After taking the sand paper to it I came to realize that this coating is tough as shit. You need to put some serious pressure on it to scratch it. The 180 grit I started off with was barely doing anything to it without some serious elbow grease. After about an hour and a half of beating the shit out of that coating, I ran back to HD for some 100 grit. The coating came off a little bit easier with the lower grit, but it was still a big pain in the ass.
After I finally got all the little spots of the coating removed, I went back up to the 180 grit and smoothed it out a little bit. I'm actually kinda digging the "brushed" look. My original intention was to sand it all the way up to 2000 grit and polish it to make it shine, and hopefully look brand new, but I'm thinking about sticking with the brushed look for now.
What do people think?
