Polishing cadmium plated steel shock body

The shock body of my ICON shocks have become oxidized. They are cadmium plated steel. I’m not a chemist ... any easy way to get a shine back on them?

 

Quick bit of google-fu and I got this -> https://youtu.be/-n8-vY7OBaQ

Don't know if it's too aggressive for the shocks, mainly because of the seals. I only watched about 30 seconds, but he may go into more detail.

 

Ya i saw that Rust Oleum tip. I might give it a try, just worried it might etch the cadmium plate a bit.

 

I don't want to be that guy, but i'll ask. What did ICON say?

 

Hmmm...$5 on ICON saying to scrub the surface gently with a soapy cloth, rinse, and pat dry with a terry towel?

Anything you do is going to take off some of the plating. By definition, the top plating surface has already turned to oxide; clean that off and you have less plating than it started with. Youtube guy is probably right...I suspect that Rustoleum cleaner has phosphoric acid as the active ingredient. It will clean off the oxide, but it will remove some good plating as well if you leave it on too long.

Polishing will mean your hands are going to come in contact with cadmium dust, or maybe another plating metal. Cadmium?...who uses cadmium anymore? Like the guy said, it's "somewhat poisonous". Zinc plating is indistinguishable from cadmium unless you're a plating specialist.

If I was young and energetic, I'd clean'em, scuff'em, and paint'em black...or red.

 

It took a few days, but I finally heard back with ICON's recommendation:

"when serving shocks at our facility the shock techs use the following process. The cylinder is spun slowly using a drill and they use a gray scotchbrite pad soaked with WD40. This process is light enough to break the debris off the cylinder with out wearing through the coating"

I ended up doing similarly with a scotchbrite and some oil. It worked fairly well. I didn't really have the patience to go through polishing compounds and the like to get them to a bright shine, but this definitely knocked some of the oxidization off the steel shock body.