mod81

anyone know if its possible to polish the stock wheels on my 81 so they are really shiny....almost chrome looking is what i'd like. But i know they are sealed or something so i didnt know if you can even do this?...if you know how to do this, i'd appreciate the breakdown. Thanks guys!

Vettkeeper

If they are aluminum wheels, and still have the clear coat, you first need to remove the clear coat (not fun). Once you have that done that the work really starts. Mine were pitted so I started off with 320 grit wet or dry sand paper to clear out the pits. Then I used a 6” buffing wheel mounted on a drill, starting with a medium grit buffing compound, for soft metal, buff until you remove all sanding marks. Then use a clean buffing wheel and finish with a fine buffing compound. Eastwood sells a kit with all the stuff needed to do a really nice job. Each wheel took me about 3 hours each. Once they are polished you can seal them clear coat them again.

lowbuck72

Although you can buy products from people like Eastwood,It's really nasty, but I've used oven cleaner to remove the clear coat on Harley parts, then sanded and polished. It's still less work than sanding the clear coat off.

rihwoods

Either way...take them off the vette..much easier..I did them on the vette..like to killed my knees..but sure like results..

UKPaul

Polished up the wheels on my '81 to a very high shine. Took lots of effort working down in grades of wet-or-dry & then finished off with polishing mops mounted on a bench grinder (holding 4 wheels up to the mops for hours on end will give you muscles ). It's a lot of work but the results are worth it. To make it easier I removed the tires. The clearcoat (or was it clear anodising?) was a pig to remove. If you've got any significant dips/chips/dents then use a coarse emery to get them out & then step down in grades, making sure that you've removed all the scratches from the previous grade before dropping down to the next finer grade (I find that 240 grade used lightly to finish off is good enough, followed by 400 if you're enjoying yourself(!), and then hitting it with a coarse sizal mop will give good results). After finishing with a fine mop they were gleaming almost like chrome. They were so good that the 1st time I buffed them up afterwards with Solvol Autosol the gleam actually diminished!
DO NOT remove scratches/chips/etc by concentrating just on that one spot with the coarser grades. You'll end up with a dip in the metal that will stand out a mile once you've finished polishing them.
Or...... save yourself a bunch of time by removing the tires & running them down to a local metal polishers. Their floor mounted polishing machines will polish them up in no time.

tyancey00

There is always the old stand by...Sell them and buy the chrome ones. I did and they are great!

Scottys78

MYBAD79

Strip the clearcoat, sand with 600,800,1200 grit and polish with chrome polish
Really not that much work, especially with the small Powerball (foam ball that attaches to a drill)

PSU 98

I second the "powerball" suggestion. It's a good product and I was very impressed with how well it worked.

MYBAD79

I forgot to mention that there are two, the "original" ball which is too big and the 'new' smaller version. The smaller ball is great

MotorHead

I took my to a place that refinishes aluminum wheels, these places are everywhere, came out looking better than new. cost me 80 bucks a wheel though and that was a long time ago.

UKPaul

Red,
Not criticising, but your wheels can be polished up even more. I used to get a dull shine like that on engine cases I used to polish & found it took huge amounts of elbow grease & time to get it better. My problem was that I'd polish up, say, a gearbox cover & thought it looked good, but then I'd bolt it on next to a highly polished timing cover & it suddenly looked really dull in comparisson. I can't tell from your pic, but what I found was that the very fine scratches from the 1200 were still there (could be faintly seen with a magnifying glass) & were difficult to remove. One way was to use solvol autosol polish with some embossed card (like a greetings card). Tear off a small strip & polish the metal with autosol on the gloss side of the card & keep going until the card disintegrates (the build up of polish/metal under it helps polish the metal really well). You'll get a black gunge building up so keep at it & you will get an amazing shine from it (after a lot of work). Since I started using polishing mops I can finish rubbing down at 240 (or 400) grade & the mops take out all the scratches (finishing with 400 grade makes for less time needed on the mops - not a worry with things like engine cases, but could be important with something as awkward as a wheel). Pic shows my wheels about 7 months after I originally polished them. I covered them with Autoglym super resin polish, which dulls them off a bit (but helps protect them from water), plus they'd dulled down during the 7 months. The pic isn't that good, but an idea of the shine I got with mops can be got from comparing the rims to the (new) chrome centre caps & lugnuts. As I said, I'm not knocking your wheels (they're good!), but you can get them up to an even better finish if you want (the downside is that at shows you'll get a bunch of people asking where you got your wheels chromed ):

MYBAD79

Paul,
Thanks for the input, I know I should sand/polish some more but I'm lazy....

I sanded one half of a rim with 1500 grit and polished some more. It looked great but I was too lazy to do all four rims.

I've used Autosol a lot, It used to be one of the cheapest chrome/metal polish products, often sold in bicycle stores... a tube used to be DM 2.99 (roughly $1.40). That was in '99 before the $%&^ Euro. ..... It's definately one of the best polish products on the market.

I'll have to sand/polish all four when the car is painted. I'll try the greetings card as you suggested, never heard that before...

UKPaul

The greeting card thing is a trick told to me by an old Rocker. For years I'd been using solvol with wads of tissue & thought I was doing OK. When I tried the card (his advice was a Rizla packet - after you'd used it to set the points gap!) I couldn't believe how much quicker it was to get a good shine.
Solvol has ramped up in price a lot in the last few years, but it can still be found at the more sensible prices occasionally (autojumbles are a good place to look). The only problem I've found with solvol is when you forget that you've left it on the floor & later tread on it. Especially when the cap is off - what a mess It's very rarely that I've actually finished a tube of solvol while polishing, most of them end up squirted across the floor, or up the wall
Know exactly what you mean about being lazy, which is why I got some polishing mops. Once the metal has been polished with the mops then it just takes a quick going over with solvol occasionally to buff it up again. The finish you get when using the fine mop can be so good that polishing with solvol acually dulls it down!!!! Er, that's why I haven't polished my wheels since 2001, it's nothing to do with lazyness, it's that I just don't want to dull them off