In "The Shawshank Redemption" the factors were Pressure and time. I find myself under the same constraints.
Last night I went to a buddy's place that owns a metal shop. He told me that the castings made it virtually impossible to "polish" so that the nickel would look good.
He said it would look horrible and suggested as a few others have, powder coating. So, that's where I'm at. I was going to wait and see what the v/c's look like from my 4.4 after bead blasting but I won't have enough time before I leave for my trip and I want to turn the key before I board my flight on the 12th of this month.
I'm again disappointed that either I planned poorly or lacked the time/money to do what I wanted.
If the v/c's from the 4.4 look good, I'll still send them off for the nickel plating and sell the powder coated ones I'll use till then.
I found a nice little shop in Issaquah, WA called Powder Vision Inc. JR and Ben were at the counter and we got along great. They understood my time crunch and helped me pick out a good alternative to nickel. I think it'll look good.
Tomorrow I sell my 4.4 and begin to assemble the 4.6 getting it ready to drop in. With some luck and TerraPhantm's help I can delete my cats and secondary air pump. This leaves me with a tad more room in the engine bay and a need for an exhaust extention to fill the gap the cats leave. Perhaps I could just hollow them out...
Will post more tomorrow evening.