[Marshall V. Daut]

Take a look at the shift lever among the photos of my friend's "warmed up" chassis that I posted last week. I'm also re-posting one photo here. The shift lever - like the rest of the chassis - was pitted and ugly when I started to rebuild the chassis. The chrome platers in this area are either lazy or crooks, no other possibility exists based on my experience with them. So, having the lever locally re-plated was not an option. Remembering Tom's warning from last year about repo shift levers, I took a different route - and one that looks more authentic and "old timey" to me than chrome.
I first used an 80 grit disk on my air grinder and removed all the pits in the metal rod. This took the lever down to bare metal. Then I started with 80 grit sandpaper on my orbital sander and removed as many of the swirl marks as I could. This took quite a bit of time. This was followed by progressively finer wet-dry sandpaper work from 180 to 220 to 400 to 600 and then 1000. I occasionally found overlooked grind marks that had to be individually re-sanded before moving on. As each finer grit sanding was completed, the shiny metal shift rod got smoother and even shinier. Finishing off with 1500 and then 2000, followed by rubbing compound and then Semichrome polish made the lever look like it had a Butler finish. In a nutshell, the metal rod's steel was polished to a high luster. The polishing grit was removed and the shift lever sprayed with clear enamel. Perhaps not good enough to fool the judges in a car show, but judge for yourself if the results are worth the time to save an original shift lever. And it won't break like repos. I have used this same procedure on spark and throttle levers on the steering quadrant and they look great. I haven't plated or bought new arms for years!
Marshall