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How To: Polish your Aluminum Diamond Palte Toolbox

dixie_boysles

Joshua 24:15
367
18
MA, NC
Written By: dixie_boysles

How-to: Polish oxidized diamond plate toolbox

Discalimer: Neither I nor FordRangerForum.com takes any responsibility in any damage or actions resulting from this Ranger Modification. When performing this mod, you are doing so at your own risk

In this how-to I will be showing you one method on bringing back the shine of your faded, oxidized diamond-plate toolbox

Materials needed:

-Cordless or Corded Variable Speed Drill (Cordless preferrably as a corded is too strong, but will work)
-Mother's Powerball
-Aluminum Polish (I used Mother's Powermetal and Meguiar's Hot Rims)
-old Microfiber Cloth
-Waterhose
-wash bucket and mitt

Tips:

-Wear old cloths as the polish does sling somewhat
-wear eye prtection if needed
-If using a corded drill, go easy, as it is alot more powerful than a cordless drill
-after applying polish to powerball, go slow at first as not to sling the polish everywhere
-Make sure toolbox is clean before doing this

I found that the Hot Rims worked better as it was thicker and just seemed to polish better


Procedure:

First clean your toolbox, you dont want grit and stuff all over it.


The Tools:

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(Thanks Stone for the pic)

Now as you can see, the toolbox is pretty weathered:

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Now you can start anywhere on the toolbox that you want, I chose the top as it was easiest. Like mentioned above start slow or you will sling the polish everwhere. You can apply the polish to the ball or to the metal, it doesn't matter.

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This is after a one pass over the surface and then wiping it down. You will want to polish until there is black residue all over the surface. Then wipe clean with microfiber towel to check for misses spots.

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Here is after 3 passes and wipe downs. The more you polish, the shinier it gets

Ok, here I was about halfway done with the toolbox, its like a night and day difference:

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Here the top is done:

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Just do the above procedures (Polish, wipe, polish wipe) to the whole toolbox until you are done. Once done, give the toolbox a good bath to get any missed residue off. Then mount on the truck again!

This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 1024x768 and weights 341KB.


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(For some Reason, the front would not polish up like the top, I polished it up like three times)
 

taxreliever

Licensed to Represent!
14,695
287
Maine
What happened to the pictures?
 

dixie_boysles

Joshua 24:15
367
18
MA, NC
im not sure!
 

dixie_boysles

Joshua 24:15
367
18
MA, NC
Im beginning to hate photobucket.
 

dixie_boysles

Joshua 24:15
367
18
MA, NC
My photobucket account is fine, so I dk why the pics are not showing up
 

slmann

Charter Member
13,472
232
Festus, Mo.
went to try and edit and see if there was something I could fix but somehow all the actual links are gone.

All the links to the pics would need to be put back in. It may be easier to start a new thread.

If you are willing to do that. You could upload your pics to the gallery here.
 

taxreliever

Licensed to Represent!
14,695
287
Maine
Anyways, thanks for detail in the thread....pics would be great, but the write up is the important part....I have a ton of diamond plate on my rig and a good annual polish like this would be awesome!
 

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