# Refinishing Ultegra Lever Arms



## motorecord (Aug 2, 2009)

I was wondering if anyone has ever tried refinishing the aluminum levers on their STI shifters? My ST-6510 Ultegra shifters have signs of oxidation on them and I was curious if it is possible to strip the clearcoat and respray them. I know structurally they are fine, but I want to know if anyone has ever tired it. Also, is the ultegra logo on the lever arm a decal or etched into the aluminum?


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## Clevor (Sep 8, 2005)

motorecord said:


> I was wondering if anyone has ever tried refinishing the aluminum levers on their STI shifters? My ST-6510 Ultegra shifters have signs of oxidation on them and I was curious if it is possible to strip the clearcoat and respray them. I know structurally they are fine, but I want to know if anyone has ever tired it. Also, is the ultegra logo on the lever arm a decal or etched into the aluminum?


Should be pretty straightforward, but lot of manual labor. I don't think Shimano calipers are clear-coated. You would just sand with progressively finer grades of sandpaper. I'm guessing start with 250 grit. The coarser the grit you start with, the longer it will take to get the mirror finish. You would go 250-300-400-600-800-1000-2000, then use polishing compound. Does it sound like a lot of work? You bet!

Plus you would have to disassemble the calipers to get access to the nooks and crannies. You might as well get a new set of Ultegra or DA brakes.

People don't realize this about pre-7900 products, for example the 7800/7803 cranks. I am more impressed with the aluminum work on this crank than all my (collection of) carbon cranks put together! The chainrings are CNC-machined (using computer-aided tooth profiles) out of billet aluminum. Talk about arcane tooth profiles. Take a look at a Campy or SRAM crank in comparison. The tooth profiles and pinning are primitive and simplistic.

I presume the mirror finish on the crank arms and spider is done manually at some point. The silkscreening of text on the crank arm near the pedal hole is flawless. Besides the fact that Shimano is the only one to figure out how to build a forged, hollow, aluminum crank arm. Yes, the cranks look fugly, but closeup, these jewels of machine work could belong in an art museum. I guess you'd have to be a machinist to appreciate the work involved.


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## martinrjensen (Sep 23, 2007)

*anodizing*

I betcha it's got a silver anodizing plus maybe a clear coat of some kind. The anodizing is kind of tricky to get off. If you want to polish them up once you start, you can't go back. Pitting is weird. I'm wondering if it's just the clear coat on top and not really pitting? Assuming there is one. I'm guessing on that though. I've removed anodizing off of stems before with oven cleaner so I could polish them up. they looked nice but then I had to polish them all the time. sometimes that's not a problem.


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## slonoma98 (Jun 22, 2005)

I had Ultegra levers with the same issue. I just sanded down the oxidized parts and polished them. Polishing is a hell of a lot of work though and a lot to maintain. I have to polish them every other week or so. I ended up just selling them. You can try clear coating them after sanding or removing the anodized coat. I don't have pics of how they looked after they were polished but I do have pics after the wet sanding. 











































Sorry for the crappy cell phone pics.


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