Well ok not so much bling, because well, it's a first gen damnit. The back story is I bought a set of OEM + wheels from Sam(dj55b) back when my stockers w/ tires were stolen. When he bought them the previous owner had them painted a variety of stupid colours. I know one of them was yellow. Sam stripped them down the best he could but they still looked rather beat. After my trip to DGRR08 the fronts were sporting a nice reddish dusting of, well, brake dust.

Fast forward to today, and I've nothing to do with myself. I've been considering cleaning them up for awhile and figured now is as good a time as any. So before boredom set in I raced off to Carquest and bought some Plasti-Kote Gloss black caliper paint (they didn't have wheel paint and I figured this stuff would be tough enough), some clear coat, metal polish, some polishing clothes, and non-related belt and new battery cables. I found out boredom can be expensive.

I started by spraying the inside of the wheel with Easy-Off oven cleaner to get through the thick grime that had accumulated over time. Then went to town with a scrub pad. The pad vs rough aluminum match ended with huge upset by the wheel. It tore the pad to shreds, so out came the wire wheel brush and drill. The wheel will think again before challenging me....... Ok, too much? Moving on.

I then moved on to the face of the wheel using pretty much the same method. Then I masked off the from factory aluminum and sprayed 3 coats of black. I then removed the tape, and began to polish away the aluminum. Then I hit the whole thing with 3 coats of clear, beacuse I'm too damn lazy to polish the wheels more than once. Wash, rinse repeat for the other wheels. Because of the learning curve and dwindling daylight I only managed to get the front wheels done today. I was surprised to see how much of a difference the fresh paint and fairly shiny aluminum made compared to the tired look of the rears. I suspect I should be able to finish the the remaing wheels off in about a week or two.

Now there are some imperfections in the paint, and some of the polishing compound got on the paint and dulled it a bit. Fortunatly the clear brought it back to a nice luster. They are pitted, have some curb rash and small nicks and scratches, but also keep in mind the wheels are 23 years old, at least!! So all in all they look fantastic. I think they really compliment the body now, and certainly bring it closer to looking new. On to the pictures!!!

 

Y'know what, they came out nice! Sure, they're not fancy schmancy, but hey, it's a noticeable difference.

 

Thanks. That's exactly what I was going for. Just something that looked better. The Watanabe's will be the fancy schmancy part.

 

I have a really nice set of oem rims that I took off a parts car. I plan on doing the same thing with the paint and then swapping out the nasty pitted oem rims that are currently on my 85 GS. Thanks for the tips. Your car looks great.

 

Hey! You finally decided to finish off where I left them .. they would of been shinier when i sold them to you, but when you get a new set of rims, you forget about the old sometimes. Can't wait to see them in person.

 

I need to do the same thing but I have big chips out of the lip on a couple of mine....Came that way with the car.

I am going to drop them at a shop to have em rebuilt by a pro so they are perfect. They will still be cheaper than buying new rims.

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does the orginal rims have a clear coat on them

 

those look a ton better than the unclean ones. it lends a feeling of newerness to the front of your car

 

Thanks everyone, I thought they looked alot better. They really stand out in person, just as long as you don't look tooooo close.

I couldn't tell you if they did. These didn't since they had already been painted and stripped twice. I don't think so but don't quote me on that.

One tip I'll pass on that I learned after the fact was the wire brush will scratch the smooth aluminum pretty bad, so a softer brush on the smoother areas will probably net better results than mine, and make polishing easier since the polish won't hide in the scratches. The cleaning and polishing are the most time consuming, depending of course on how dirty the wheels are.

Also I may be mistaken but I think they need to be balanced again. I seem to have developed a high speed shake at around 130KPH that wasn't there before I did the work. It seems a few grams of dirt removed and a few grams of paint added just might make a difference. I have to replace my rear tires now anyway so I'll have all four balanced when the rears are mounted.

Thanks for the comments. Hopefully I'll have more pics of the rears soon.

 

Ya the original rims did come clear coated from factory to prevent corrosion of the aluminum. I don't think i'd recommend wire brushing but if it were done, i would say do it with a brass bruss and see how that goes as its the softest. Personally when i started doing the rims, After I stripped off the paint with a paint remover, I went and started sanding with 320 grit i belive, then worked my way up to 800 grit and from there used Mother's Rim polisher (for Mag and Aluminum). If I were to try anything, I would try using that Mother's Polishing ball. Those seem to work pretty good from what I hear.

 

looking great, but get some tireshine on the rubber to compliment that fresh black paint

 

they look great!! how do you think the clear will hold up under the heat of braking?

 

Very nice!Looks loads better.

 

I'm not entirely sure. According to Sam they came cleared from the factory so I'm hoping newer paint technology will prevail and the rattle can stuff I used will hold up. I am pretty hard on my brakes so I'm sure any problems will pop up fairly quickly. If worse comes to worse I'll just strip the clear off and leave them with the black caliper paint. Maybe I can find a high temp clear. Also the clear is only on the outside and I don't see the heat transferring from the caliper and through the whole wheel to the outer surface. maybe on the track but I haven't had the car on a track yet. Since that side has air constantly flowing over it, it "shouldn't" be a problem. Only time will tell though. Hopefully tomorrow I can get my *** in gear and get the rears done. Was going to do it today but decided to sit around and watch movies all day. Good thing too because we got hit by a serious storm today.

 

There is a special clear coat that you can buy for rims. Handles brake dust and heat better. Not sure what kind of clear you bought.

 

ALL DONE!!!! I was able to get off my *** today and finish off the rear wheels. Sad to say they didn't quite turn out as well as the fronts. The right rear wheel has some weird cancer like marks on the spokes and the left didn't want to polish as nicely. But they are done and it looks 10 times better.

The clear I used is actually an engine enamel so it should hold up pretty well. That white crap on the left tire is Simoniz Tire Shine

 

Looks good. Job well done.

 

Nice job. i have spent a good deal of quality time with foamy bathroom cleaner and wheels. kudos.

 

Foamy bathroom cleaner? What do you use, and is it that good?