Hi. looking for ways to bring back a shine on a set of 1982 aluminum wheels, they look as if they have a coating on them ??? Thought I would ask , before destroying them .

 

Good old fashioned polishing... after you remove the clear coat of course...

http://forums.corvetteforum.com/show...luminum+wheels

http://forums.corvetteforum.com/show...luminum+wheels

There have been a number of threads on this subject here in the past 6 months. Try searching the achieves and you'll find some really good information.

Good luck... GUSTO

 

Check out www.flitzit.com. They have a polish,microfiber cloth, and buffing ball combination I like for about $45. The polish is not abrasive and can be used on many materials.

 

One thing to add, when sanding the wheels, should you go with dry or wet sanding? What is the difference?:o

 

Depending upon the condition of the wheel, once the clear is removed, wet sanding may not be required, however if it is required, it should be one of the final stages just before polishing...

GUSTO

 

I used Mothers polish and elbow grease. Worked like a charm. It took me about 1 hour four each wheel (off the car). My wheels were in bad shape. I have heard the mothers polishing wheel works great to eliminate the elbow grease.

Darrel1

 

I purchased mothers polishing wheel and their wheel cleaning polish and it work out great.

 

So it (wet sanding) is for tougher to remove imperfections? The reason I ask is that I have the origional pair of wheels on my vette, and 3 of them seem to be in good, albeit dull, state, while the fourth seems to be scratched like someone took a wool brush to it? I am wondering what would be best in this case.

 

First get all of the clear off of the rim. This will tell you if the scratches are in the clear (always a possibility) or they are in the aluminum. At that point if the scratches are in the aluminum, go ahead and wet sand with 200 or greater wet&dry paper. This will take out all minor imperfections and most scratches. When you are satisfied with that, go at it with the power ball or whatever other method you want to use wit a good aluminum polish... pick your favorite...Semi-Chrome, Wenol, Blue-Job, Mothers...

Here's an excellent link for wheel care you can download and save... http://www.mothers.com/detailguidedo...me%20polish%22

Mine favorite is Semi-chrome with a small air powered die grinder and a small buffing pad. Now, about once a year I go at them by hand with some Semi-chrome and they look like this...


Good luck...I don't think you'll be disappointed... GUSTO

 

Did the same with my '81 wheels about 4 years back. The clearcoating (clear anodising?) needs to be removed & I used 240 grade wet-or-dry paper for that (plus it also polishes out any small imperfections, deeper ones will need coarser grades). Doing it dry means that the paper will clog up quickly, doing it wet keeps the paper clean of clag, but makes a real mess. Get the surface as best you can with 240 grade & then drop down to 400 grade (that clearcoat can be tough to remove so don't plan on getting them finished within an hour!). Use the 400 grade to remove all "scratches" from the 240 grade. Once polished with 400 grade I used a polishing mop (as suggested above) to bring them up to a shine. Like everything else, preparation is important, if you take a "that'll be OK" attitude while using the wet-or-dry you'll end up polishing up a surface that still contains sanding marks from the coarser grades & these will take a lot longer to remove with mops then they do with a finer grade of paper. If you don't remove them you'll end up with a dull finish, do it right & it'll look nearly as good as chrome. Take the minimum amount of metal off as possible. Every cast alloy thing I've polished (& there's been lots over the years) has a surface that's smooth, but below it there are small air bubbles(?)/pores that will stand out if you go down to them as you'll have lots of minute pits in the surface. You'll never get rid of them once you've polished down to them. Once polished I find that Solvol Autosol is brilliant for bringing up a good shine (doing it at the moment with my wheels). If you've not got any polishing mops then you'll have to use more elbow grease & work down in grades to about 1200. Get the surface as smooth as possible, any scratches that stand out will still be there after polishing, so get rid of them with the paper. Once as smooth as you can get it, hit it with a decent, slightly abrasive, polish such as Solvol. Applying the polish with a piece of glossed card (like a greetings card) speeds up the process (though a rag is fine), but don't keep wiping the polish off (which is where a lot of people go wrong). Just keep rubbing away & applying more polish when it dries out.

On bad surfaces (or clearcoated) this process is labor intensive, so it may be a lot easier to remove the tires & drop the wheels in at a metal polishers. It won't cost a lot & it'll save you hours of time (& mess). It's hard to say on the Net as I can't see them, but some things polish easily, ie you can start on the very fine grades of wet-or-dry, but some seem to take forever. If you do get polishing mops (which make it much, much easier) be careful not to let the revolving pigtail touch the surface of the metal!
However you polish them up (I strongly suggest paying somebody else to do it!), you'll end up with bare metal. This will react with water &, if they use salt on the roads in the winter, you'll get horrible black & white corrosion stains from it. Some people use wax to protect them but I accidently found that Autoglym super resin polish is excellent at protecting polished alloy (spilt a lot on my bike's gas tank just after I'd spent hours polishing the engine ). The polish will dull the freshly polished shine down a bit but the protection it gives is excellent. I used it on the Vette's wheels when I first polished them (4 years back?) & after it's sat in a very damp garage for all that time (including a flood a few months back) my chrome has rust on it & other parts I polished look horrible now, but the wheels are still in good condition. I'm currently polishing them with Autosol for the 1st time in 4 years (I'd say that was impressive, as I used to polish the alloy on the bike once a week). About 1/2 hour with some Solvol on a rag gets each wheel back to highly polished. To give an idea of how good the Autoglym is, it has taken me upto 4 hours to polish the alloy up on the bike's chaincase if it's been used in the rain for a week (or it used to - I now use autoglym on it). A chaincase has nothing like the surface area of a Vette wheel. Don't know if Mothers, etc do an equivalent polish to the Autoglym but, once you reach the stage in life where you're sick of repeatedly polishing things, it's a real godsend.
If you are going to polish them by hand then first try some fine paper (1200/1000) to see if you can get a good finish with it. Starting on a coarser paper seems great at the time (rips through clearcoat & scratches/chips) but you've then got to use finer papers to remove the scratches from the coarse paper (which can take forever!). I started on 240 as, from experience, I knew that it would be needed to cope with the condition of the wheels. Sometimes, with dull things that haven't got clearcoat, it may look like wet-or-dry is needed but quite often just some work with the polish (Autosol) will give great results. The golden rule is to start off with the finest abrasive that will do the job, even if it's just the polish itself. The platinum rule is not to concentrate on one small area (eg, a deep scratch) with polishing mops or very abrasive paper as it will cause a dip that will stand out a mile once it's all polished up (& will look worse than the scratch/chip that you removed).
Hope all this verbage helps (if you think it took a while to read it, wait until you try polishing 4 wheels by hand ).

 

I HATE sanding, so I had my wheels done.

If you live in NorCal, Stockton Wheel charges $75 a wheel to polish them out