First I attacked my intercooler with with paint stripper to reveal some rough cast aluminum. Then took to it with some 400 grit sandpaper, smoothed it off with 1200 grit. Finally after hours and hours of elbow grease I got to finish it off with Autosol. Did the same to the turbo shield...

The results...

(cell phone camera doesn't do it much justice)

wow... looks great. I can not imagine how much work it took.

Oh, while I was at it I sent 3 cans of carby cleaner and 2 buckets of hot water down the intercooler and got out 15 years worth of buildup from dirty airfilters and the previous owner who ran the oem oil breather system

It was built up pretty thick in there

Nice work, heat shield looks especially good. Plan to do this to mine one day soon, eh black paint on my intercooler is chipping off everywhere now. Interesting about the 15 years of gunk in your intercooler, makes me think mine will be filthy lol

you will need to seal that with something now or it will oxidize rather quickly......just speaking from personal experience. Maybe if you can find a high temp clear coat or something.

I tried to polish the exhaust shield on my 4th gen years ago and finally gave up and painted it because I couldn't keep it shiny

^--- This is true.

Generally I just leave it as is and give it another scrub every time i want to take pictures.

It's a PITA but it comes up good every time.

clear coat it..!