My car has been parked outside all winter. A bunch of my aluminum/chrome engineparts are corroded and dirty. I pulled my valve covers off today, and am trying to clean them. The polish I'm using is Meguair's all metal polish, but it isn't getting them any cleaner. Anybody have any advice, or ways to get these clean?

 

Since you have the valve covers off : I'd go with 2 different polishing compounds (Tripoli and White Rouge)on a buffing wheelwith anelectric drill.
It shouldn't take you longer than10-12mins per valve cover to make them look like chrome again.

 

are the valve covers chrome or polished aluminum? if they are corroded and stuff and wont clean up easily then they are prob polished so i would get some mothers aluminum polish and a powerball to put on a drill. if they are chrome, then i dont know what to tell you.

 

I assumed []the your valve covers were Aluminum when I said to use Tripoli and then White Rouge.

But if you have Chrome Valve covers you might want to try the Green Compound.
http://www.swmetal.com/cart/search?s...ng%20Compounds
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Since you have them off, I would take them to a local shop that does the Powder coating and have them coated. You can do the Chromed look or just have them done in the same color as the car. A local shop in Indianapolis will do them for $45 dollars. It takes about one day to have them done. This way they won't look bad every few weeks.

 

they usually stay pretty good. I got some stuff called "flitz" and borrowed a drill and buffing wheel. It's getting the job done. Thanks a lot for the advice tho. It's really good to get some input, and hear what other people use.

 

I've used Flitz before and it's awesome at shining metals up. I've used it on the stock exhaust tips in the past and it has made them shine!