Scratches & water spots on aluminum radiator

[Richs66]

Thought you guys could help me out with this issue...………..got this radiator about 2 yrs ago, cant seem to get rid of the water spots...……….and the scratches you see are all from using microfiber cloths, and not the cheap ones by the way.

Ive used quite a few metal polishes, they all seem about the same.

Do you guys recommend using 0000 steel wool, or is there some better way to go about this, I haven't tried any buffer machine yet...……..just doing this by hand.

Thanks

Rich

[itsgn]

There are dedicated metal polishes out there (paste like stuff, usually gray), and I'd try those with a mini (<=3") polisher. Or if you can't even fit that, then obviously by hand. Water spot etches shouldn't be too deep on aluminum, because aluminum oxide (unlike iron oxide, aka rust) forms a stable layer, which prevents further/deeper oxidization of the material. This also means that if you have removed water spots and they keep coming back shortly, then you definitely have a (coolant) leak somewhere, and that's why you can't get rid of the spots.

Also, whenever polishing metal surfaces, always make sure the material you're polishing is not just thinly coated with metal (like chrome coated plastic, but some metal plated with a different metal), because otherwise it will abrade the coating in no time and expose whatever material is below, which will not look nice.

And good quality microfibers virtually can't scratch, especially not metal surfaces. If you're getting scratches with them, then they contain (or picked up during the process) some contaminants (which could be very well oxidizes metal particles) which did the actual scratching, and you used to much downward pressure (ie. you scrubbed too hard) while using them.