[DeTomaso] You can polish a turd, but should you polish a ZF?

Christopher Kimball chrisvkimball at msn.com
Sat Mar 14 21:12:05 EDT 2009


I just took my ZF to Byron Sanborn of Vintage Racing Motors Incorporated so he could safety-wire the bolts and do a cursory check on things before I reinstall it with my new motor (which has yet to be built).

Byron is one of the few ZF experts in the Country, so I'm told.

Anyway, I told him I always thought it would be cool to polish my ZF, and it turns out it might not be so cool after all.  In fact, he said polishing the ZF causes it to retain much more heat than in its normal state.  He also said that since the end piece of the transmission is not aluminum, many owners who polish their ZFs want that end piece chromed to match.  He said that messes up the bearings (or something like that--I can't remember exactly).

Anyway, since I've seen so many polished ZFs around, I thought I'd throw this out to the forum for comment.

I'm sure this will generate at least as many opinions as has the ZDP subject!

Chris

PS:  Today a group of us had the opportunity to visit Richard Griot's garage at his personal residence.  Pretty impressive, I must say.  He owns the "Griot's Garage" company that sells high-end car care products.

One of the attendees arrived in a beautiful, green Mangusta, which was also pretty cool.  



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