Hello All,

Just thought I would pass along a little tip I developed over the weekend to polish SU dashpots. Mine were in pretty bad shape and doing it all by hand seemed to be taking forever and I was not getting the results I wanted (so much corrosion and too many imperfections). So I was looking for some way to spin the dashpot and sand out the imperfections, but I don't own a lathe - but do own a drill press.

Here's what I did - I found that the centre of the dashpot fits an 8" long 3/8" socket extension perfectly. I droped the dashpot over the extension, and chucked the square end in the drill press. Then I used the handyman's secret weapon (duct tape) to tape the top of the dashpot to the drill press chuck. Put the drill press on 900 rpm and started with 120 grit emery cloth working my way through the grits until I wet sanded with 400 grit W/D paper. Making sure to get all the previous scratch marks out.

Worked great - had to re-apply the duct tape occasionally and hand sand the tops, but it worked great and took about 45 minutes each. I then polished them (cloth wheel in drill press) with white diamond compound and they cam up with a mirror shine - I'll post shots later today.

Just thought I'd share.
Craig