I am trying to restore my window mechanisms and after removal and disassembly I gave them a good scrubbing with a cleaner. I got all the grease and dirt off them and they look OK but how can I get them to look great? Will a glass beading remove the protective coating (zinc?) or make it look nice? Would something like Eastwood's zinc spray be a good option? Any advice is appreciated...

Al

Oven cleaner worked for me.

Aged zinc is usually dark gray looking. But most of it should still be there doing what it is supposed to do, as long as you don’t see any red rust. Not sure why you’d want to, but you can make the regulator look a little better for a limited time by polishing it with a mild abrasive powder wetted with vinegar. The zinc is soft at the surface, and you don’t want to remove more than a few atoms, because the zinc is there to protect the steel. Zinc itself corrodes and is often protected with chromate, a liquid coating, which helps keep it shiny for a time.

As for the bare steel gear cover, you can clean and paint the outside, trusting the inside is grease protected.

Yeah, I don't want to remove the coating, I just want it to look really nice. The cleaner I used got all the grime off, I am just looking to go to that next level.

I cleaned mine with some oven cleaner and a brush from the $1 store. You can only let it set for maybe 5-10 minutes, then immediately get it washed off.

The process from start to finish was to soak the mechanisms in a tub of Evapo-rust, slightly diluted for 10-15 minutes to get rid of rust/corrosion, oven cleaner, then mean-grean from the $1 store.

They came out pretty nice.

Use aluminum brightener the acid based kind.This works very well.Like the oven cleaner method spray on for 10 to 15 minutes do not let dry keep wet.Then rinse with water.cant seem to post a link to it but go to mopar muscle and type in window regulator in the search and go to the devils in the details.Good article