Polished Turbine housing?
 

I have my turbo off right now while my head is at the shop so I decided to grind down the casting marks and sand it smooth. I figured I would polish it first to see what it looks like. How does it look?

I like the look of the polished finish,but this is not very efficient. My uncle's drag car has his turbine housing done with Swaintech thermal coating,than it's sprayed with a Flat black thermal coating,than there is a DEI carbon turbo blankets on it. You can literaly put your hand on it while the car is running.
What do you guys think?

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a64...Picture389.jpg
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a64...Picture396.jpg
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i never heard of people polishing the turbine side. i would be more concerned with heat management like your uncles car before u worry about showing this puppy off.

looks legit....

take it to jet-hot coatings and get it done in "chrome" it looks polished, its functional, and there is some sort of guarantee with it that it will look good for YEARS

Like I said,I had to sand it anyway. This took me 5 minutes.

I've seen polished turbine housings. Several,infact thats why I polished mine. I had just recently seen one at a car show last summer. Ever since than I wanted to see what it would look like on mine.

Those DEI turbo blankets are over $250. Between that,the Swaintech,and the flat black the total should be somewhere near $300! I just spent $50K building the car. I'm trying to work on a budget on the last few things.

I'm not worried about a few HP. It's an 8 second car no matter which way you look at it. I do want it to look somewhat aestheticaly pleasing.

It's called Sterling. Yeah,it's not bad looking. Little more expensive than the Swaintech.

I'm trying to keep costs down guys. That being said,I saw a guy on LS1tech.com that used a thermal blanket for a furnace thats rated for 1700 deg. It actually looked pretty good.

thats it!! my buddy has ALL his stuff done in sterling on his turbo'd 5.0

it looks pretty good. pretty sure he got the headers, downpipe, I/C piping all done for around 300-350 which i thought was pretty good.

I know all the pros and cons of what I'm doing here guys. I've been building cars for 20yrs. I'm just trying to get an opinion on how it LOOKS.

Yeah,it's nice for sure. I had my downpipe on my GN done in sterling. It was'nt cheap. Looked very nice though.

This is the machine I polish on. It's a nasty little machine. It'll rip a 1G intake manifold out of your hands and send it clear across the shop if your not careful. It took the factory finish off the turbine housing and made it look like it does in the photo within 2-3 minutes.
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a64...n/102_0794.jpg
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a64...n/100_0789.jpg
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I had Swaintech on my 93' Talon's Turbonetics manifold and PTE SC-6152E. Worked well,but as you can see was not very pretty.

looks ni ce... that must have taken a min

looks pretty cool but isnt it going to rust really bad?
the turbo blankets i've seen are more like $150 and you really don't have to use anything else with them if you dont want. i agree though, the sterling coating would look nice and be functional... if you spent so much building the car, why not do this properly as well, especially when it comes to heat management and efficiency? that will have an effect on performance too...

p.s. i wish i had that polisher!

looks good

Looks like a caswell polisher to me

These were pretty much my exact thoughts.

I don't know how long that will hold up but damn that manifold is gorgeous!

i approve! going to blanket the rest of it under a heat shield...

http://hphotos-snc1.fbcdn.net/hs111...._7588748_n.jpg

I work in a metal finishing shop that does chrome plating and powder coating based in ne philly and i would say it depends what your going for. The exhaust side is cast iron and even if polish will rust farely quickly, so if your looking for some kind of coating, i would recomend a jet hot coating (a silver ceramic metalic coating). But if your talking about the intake side they look really good polished. At my place it would cost about 50-75 for a show quality polish.