Ok, I've tried cleaning them without harming the coat but it appears that the clear coat is gone. Nothing I do can clean them so now I'm thinking about having them painted. Has anyone done this that can give some input?

 

Use oven cleaner to remove all the paint, clear coat, and anything else. This will get you down to bare metal. Hose them down really good to remove all the oven cleaner. You might even wash them with some soap and a brush. Let them dry. Tape them off however you want/need to, and paint them. If you still have tires on the rims then you may want to be careful about spraying the oven cleaner. I'm not sure what it does to rubber. Just be careful with the overspray...

 

I painted a set gold with polshed lips. i wanted to insall them on my Fb, but unfortunately it got wrecked. now im looking to sale them or keep them until i get another 4x110 rx7. just make sure the surafce is clean and DRY before you paint.

 

The 5 inch Mazda waffles? I thought they where just alloy without any coating?

 

Cool Cool, good advise. And I'll will remove the tires. Going for the showroom condition on this SA. But yes they are the 5" stock waffles and it must have a clear coat because my spare, never been used, has a shine to it. I'm hoping to use that spare for the color matching paint. Don't know how they could do it since they need a small sample of the color.

 

i dont know about using oven cleaner, but i sand blasted mine before i painted them and that worked great.

 

I'm currently refinishing some 83 LE rims and used aircraft paint stripper (won't harm aluminum) to remove clearcoat. Worked great and now on to cleaning, polishing and clearcoat.

 

EDIT: didn't read post above...

+1 for Aircraft remover