Polishing lip and Sanding and stripping ?'s

[Prospeeder]

WHen im sanding my lip on my wheels, do i have to do it by hand? or can i use an electric palm sander? And when i clear coat, will the regular clear coat last alright, i herd of it yellowing from the brake heat, but i wouldnt think the wheels themsleves would get that hot. And do i need to get ALL the gold off, or can i leave some on, cause theres no way in hell i can get it all off

[ToroToro]

Prime and paint over whatever gold may be left. Dont forget the adheasion promoter.

 

You pretty much will have to do the lip by hand. In theory, you could use a palm sander, but I've never seen paper with a grit high enough that'll work on a sander. It doesn't take THAT long to polish by hand anyway.

 

Regular clearcoat will do fine. You'd still be far better off with zoop seal or something like that instead though. Clear coat can chip and scratch pretty easily.

[Prospeeder]

we have some fine grit palm sander paper right now, so would that work then? and i dont need to prime it, cause the aluminum is so porous that the paint will adhere very well

 

How long till the aluminum Oxidizses, like, visibly

[ToroToro]

How fine is fine? At the minimum, you want to go up to 1000 grit before using a polish.

 

And the only way I can see you NOT having to prime them is if you are using a thick brush on paint. Spray paint is just going to run off of the high spots and puddle in the low spots. It'll chip and peel real easy too.

 

No sense in doing it half ass after all the work you already put in.

 

And the aluminum will lose its luster the second any strong chemical hits it. Even just rain water will mess it up after a short while.

[Prospeeder]

ahh, well, i guess a coat of primer wouldnt hurt, but i have up to a 1000 for the palm sander

[LukeZ34]

I started with 200 grit wet/dry sand paper. I laid the wheel down on the driveway, turned on the water and started sanding.

After all the rough crap was sanded down I moved to 400 grit, did some more sanding, then 800 grit, then 1000, 1500, and finally 2000. It was probably overkill on the sanding, but each wheel turned out pretty well.

I used some 'wheel' clearcoat I found at wallyworld, taped off the areas inside the rim (over the gold) and the tire on the outside of the rim to keep clear overspray off. Sprayed 5 light coats of clearcoat on the silver lip. They still look nice to this day.

 

I took some pics of my process: http://www.lukez34.com/galleries/tgp/rims/index.htm

[Prospeeder]

i just got 2 wheels polished, on the really nasty one i started with 180, the other 220, and whent 220, 400, 800, 1000, and rubbing compound, and it looks great

[logikf1ve]

Personally, I would recommend doing it by hand and going even higher than 1000 grit. You can see better results with the hand sanding, and wet sanding with 2000 you won't see any of the scratches after polishing. Speaking of which, how are you polishing them? Manually or are you using a tool (such as a dremel, etc)? Using a tool such as a mini die grinder with polishing wheels seem to do a FAR better job than doing it by hand. It will be easier on your fingers too. If you're going to be driving in snow I would recommend clearcoating them too. It won't take long for the road salt to ruin your nice shiny wheels.

 

As hard to believe as it may be, all the sanding and polishing will eventually pay off. Obviously not the same wheel, but I spent close to 36 hours per wheel on these. They were almost junkyard condition when I started.

 

That mesh pattern looks even worse than my snowflakes were to strip.

[Prospeeder]

im hand wet sanding, i used my Palm sander on my very worst wheel w/ 180, and then went by hand 220 and up, i dont think im gonna go into THAT great of time, i need em done by the end of this month, and with school starting, thats gonna be hard, cause painting them when its gold wont work to well