If shiny things make you smile, you can purchase or chrome plate almost any part of a motorcycle. There are plenty of bolt-on accessories available and for those that want to do a little more work, a trip down to your local chrome shop
can have endless amounts of opportunities for parts dipped in the shiny stuff. But there’s a good reason why you don’t see many polished motors out on the road. It’s an extremely slow and precision process. Each fin of the cylinder must be painstakingly hit with different grades of sand paper to achieve the mirror-like finish. The total time to polish a motor is in excess of 40 hours and consumes approximately 800 custom-made sanding wheels. The final result is stunning and definitely sets the motor apart at shows or on the road. but the fun doesn’t stop there, as periodic maintenance is necessary to keep that original shiny luster. There are a few tricks and tips to help the process so expect to see a future tech piece on keeping a polished motor looking new.

To tackle the job of polishing the motor, we enlisted True Finish chrome located in the heart of chrome plating: Orange County, California. True Finish can plate anything from motorcycle parts to glass bottles in different finishes such as chrome, nickel, black chrome, pewter, copper, gold, brass, and more. For the motor work, we enlisted the help of Precision V-twin out of Phoenix. Will White and Adam Smith have a combined 23 years experience as Harley mechanics and know their way around a V-twin better than most. Aside from engine builds, they specialize in full bike builds, including paint. They were our first choice for making sure this puzzle didn’t loose any of its pieces.

Sources:

True Finish chrome

(714) 705-6978

Precision V-Twin

(602) 569-1118

[Torch Industries](http://torchind.com/)

(623) 842-2277