Polishing Petrol Cap Ring :- How To

Right after seeing this topic a few times and given the ridiculous prices on ebay for the polished petrol cap ring i decided to have a look and do it myself..

The ring itself is actually metal painted silver...(i believe the 'chinese' later versions are plastic however)

First to seperate the inner key lock part....simply push the centre of the fuel cap through the front of the petrol cap...you should now be left with just the outer ring

Then....there is no reason to take apart the outer ring from the inner black ring...the inner part will not be damaged during the polishing process whatsoever

Firstly with steel wool start to rub away a small area of the top coat of lacquer and paint...you will find that it is ...1.lacquer...2.silver coloured paint...3.black base coat...4.base metal....as below...



Then you need to remove the allen screws....these are purely for aesthetic purposes...i just put the right sized allen key in and with a little twisting action they pop out...not screw out...you'll be there all day!



After a good couple of hours of rubbing down with steel wool you will be left with a metal ring...of course this time will be shortened if you have a dremel or similar



From this point its where you start using the differnet courses of wet and dry papers....i started with 400,then 800 then finishing with 1200...the results are great and will be getting some finer grade this week to really finish it off to the best possible shine...

Once done with the finest wet and dry,very important to use this fine grade wet,time for the autosol....lots more rubbing and buffing down will give you the desired finish


finally finish off with a couple of coats of lacquer and your done.....lovely

Again this is all done by hand but if you have a dremel or similar this will make the job far easier




The small allen screws were easily done by placing in the end of a drill and then with a cloth doused in autosol polished up with minimal effort...then simply push them back in place..remembering first to remove any remnants of steel wool etc from the holes or they wont sit correctly




now you can sit back and relax with a cup of tea or coffee and admire your handy work..........

OF COURSE YOU WONT BE ABLE TO GRIP THE CUP COS YOUR HANDS WILL BE SO SORE.........

So you don't repaint them, just lacquer the metal? any pic's of the finished product?

How to tart up your sorry looking fuel cap!!

Plenty of elbow grease required :omg:

Before


Old fuel cap from scrapyard, screwed to a short plank.
Used a orbital sander with a fine sand sheet to take off the factory paint.

During


Used 150 to 1000 grade wet n dry to buff it up and get the scratches from the orbital sander

After


Used halfords rubbing compound to bring up to a nice polished finish
(well, the missus did )

Just needs a coat of clear lacquer.

looking good dude. i need to do this at some point might need to get hold of a duff fuel cap first though.

Great pics, that we've waited almost 3 years for, thanks Andy. Added to the bling guides for others to benefit from all your hard work. Nice job. :broon:

Hi. I know this was posted a while back but I just wanted to say that I have just done this to my TF's fuel cap . Absolutely brilliant 'How To' . I can't wait for it to dry so I can put it back together. Many thanks , John. :wave:

Did this to Megs cap, then transferred the ring to Felix..... still looks like new. The laquer stops it losing its shine.

Missus won't let me do this mod to her car!! :nonod: :nonod:

Why? Looks great. Here it was on Meg:

Hi, I thought that I'd make a start on tarting-up the metal bezel on my filler cap. I plan to respray rather than polish, but I couldn't separate the bezel from the plastic inner part. There are four tabs on the inside, which I can disengage, but the two parts are still very much connected. I'm missing something. Any tips?

From what I can recall & it was a while ago; firstly mark the aluminium ring & the plastic backer to make sure when you reassemble you get it right first time, then remove the mock allan headed studs, then ease one half from the other.
Ahhh yours is a 500, sorry mate your on your own ! ! ! It could be completely different & I don’t want to be responsible for any more headaches than I’ve already caused.

No, not a 500, a pretty run-of-the-mill 2003 135.

It's prising those parts apart (the aluminium ring and the black plastic centre, that seems tricky.