Polish Exhaust System

[70 Cobrajet]

Mike,

I have a 2018 Mustang GT that I recently purchased and now will be only driven on sunny days with dry roads. I am wanting to polish my exhaust system and remove the coating that is on it? What process and product would you recommend to remove this coating in order to get to the bare material and keep it looking good?


Thanks,
Mike


68372 68373 68374

[Bill D]

I use Collinite Metal Wax to clean and polish my exhaust and Wolfgang Aluminum Polish to maintain it. The process can be tedious so have plenty of time.

[Sizzle Chest]

If it is stainless you could remove it, sand it, polish it and it will look like a million bucks. The 'Terminator' Cobra guys do this a lot with their factory exhaust systems.

[70 Cobrajet]

Bill/Scott,

Thanks for the recommendations. I took some 00, 000, 0000 steel wool with some older aluminum polish I had sitting around to a small section yesterday and had good results. I will be purchasing some of the products that were recommended by you two along with some sandpaper. I did check out the Terminator cobra forum and those guys are insane on what they go through to obtain the full polished finish. Here is a picture of what I did after about 10 minutes of work yesterday.

Fortunately, the Mustang is stored on a lift when not being driven, so access to the exhaust is easy and I will have most of the winter to work on this..

Regards,
Mike

[Bill D]

That’s looking really good! Once you get your hands on the products I think you’ll be even more pleased. I do all my exhaust polishing on my lift too. It does make doing so SO much easier.

[Eldorado2k]

Many years ago when I was a young noob I attempted the same thing on the dual exhaust of my Cadillac Seville... I thought it would look nice to have the mufflers which were completely underneath the car shine like chrome, the same way the dude on youtube did with his Nissan 350Z... But the more I rubbed with the steel wool the more something just didn’t feel right. Then it finally hit me, like wait a second, I’m not exactly getting any chrome shine out of this... I’m not supposed to be rubbing this coating off am I? That rust preventive coating was on there for a reason! Doh![emoji29]

I took Detailing way too far with that idea. Noob learned a lesson that day. Lol.

[Bill D]

The tarnished spots on the exhaust can always be helped with something like Collinite Metal Polish if you don’t want to polish the whole system to a mirror shine.

[Eldorado2k]

The tarnished spots on the exhaust can always be helped with something like Collinite Metal Polish if you don’t want to polish the whole system to a mirror shine.

I’m not so sure the mufflers on an older Cadillac are the same kind of animal as the ones on his 2018 Mustang GT.. A Mustang GT can feature things like the exhaust, a Cadillac Northstar, not so much.. I really don’t think I was supposed to be removing that layer of coating and was fortunate to leave it be.

Very similar to if someone were to scrape all the rubber coating off of their wheel wells thinking they were somehow deep cleaning all that crud off of them.. Mess around and scrape off the protective coating that was meant to be there.

The stainless steel exhaust tips shine nice, but that’s about as far as it goes on an old Caddy.

[Bill D]

Yeah, my Cadillac’s exhaust isn’t polished. Over the years I had to touch it up with stainless steel colored paint from Eastwood which has held up really well.