The following covers a restoration of used strut bar that was purchased from eBay. Originally they had many cosmetic issues. The first was an obvious overspray on the aluminum bar:

The strut bracket itself looked like it was painted with a brush.

The rear of the bracket looks like it was painted with a rattle can.

The strut bar itself looked like it had a number of dings and corroded.

To restore the brackets, they were sandblasted and powder coated. In this case they were powder coated blue.

The brackets were powder coated in a really big booth, which is a 4 man Nordson. It's one of the largest powder coating systems in Canada.

Polishing the aluminum bar

Required materials: Orbital sander. 240 grit sandpaper. Cleaning solvent (toluene). Polishing compound (Meguiar's heavy cut). Rags. Dust mask. Scotchbrite pad (I used maroon medium grit pad).

The following picture shows all of the materials required minus the drill and polishing pad.

1. Wash the aluminum with a cleaning agent. The solvent used in this case, toluene, is actually the key ingredient in race gas with 114 octane.
2. Sand the bar with the sander until no nicks or scratches are visible. A good approach is to sand the whole bar, wipe it down, and if any black marks are visible, go back and sand that area until they are gone.
3. Use a scotchbrite pad to remove the swirl marks from the sander. 600 grit wet sanding can also be done instead, if a scotchbrite pad is unavailable. If any swirl marks are left then they will be visible after polishing, so they must be removed.
4. Use a drill with a polishing pad and a liquid automotive polishing compound. You can also use a bar of polishing compound, like red rouge for jewelry (comes in blue, green, white, red different grits). Start at one end and work your way across to other end. The aluminum will turn black and smell bad.

   

5. Continue polishing it until the compound is gone, then wipe it down and look for missed spots. If you work your way from a heavy grit to a lighter grit compound the job will look fantastic. The same can be applied to doing valve covers, and the end result will make the surface look as if it is chromed.

Finished result

Pictures and write up courtesy of Jman.

Also see

• Ford Escort & ZX2 section for the entire index of all Ford Escort and ZX2 related articles.