Clean and polish

I use a high speed buffing wheel and rouge designed for aluminum, ……but I strip the cars of all parts, including number boards, and name plates,…..trying to polish by hand can be a daunting task, IMO, and just plain miserable to get all the dried up polish out of all those hard to reach places,……ALSO, any polish is going to change the luster to something more resembling a mirror as opposed to the original “ extrusion” finish these cars were mfr.‘ed with ……kind of careful what you wish for, …..I like the high polished mirror look, so I bought some real rough cars cheap  and restored them for my PW Santa Fe F3’s …….doing them by hand, or even with a drill and a Mother’s ball has to be a clock bandit, ……

Pat

You can use a brass toothbrush to clean the 2500 series cars up. Brush with the "grain" of the extrusion. It will clean them up, but not make them too shiny.

Thanks for those ideas.  Will try them this afternoon.   It tried a bit of Mother's on a spot to test, and like it does to aluminum, it would bring it to a mirror shine.  I have a few other 2500 series cars that are in great shape to compare to these two faded cars.  I could tell right away they would end up too shiny if I did the complete polish work on them with the aluminum polish as soon as I saw the black on the rag.   I knew it was cutting the crud.  I had a '74 HD Sportster back in my youth and thought about having the engine cases and rocker boxes chromed, then I tried the Hapich Semi-chrome on it and they came out almost like a chrome finish with a lot elbow grease and  black encrusted rag residue.  Plus it protected the aluminum such that they stayed shiny for a long time compared to the bare aluminum from the factory.