I read on here somewhere that the rims are aluminum and were just clear coated out of the factory. Is there anyway i can take off the clear coat and polish the wheel and clear coat it, or just leave it polished?

 

Yup. You can use a stripping agent that is safe for aluminum, or if you're young and have lots of energy, you COULD just sand it off, although then you would definitely need to re-polish the wheel. That's all fine if you're trying to learn karate, or get carpal tunnel, but having done a set of wheels that way before, if I had to do it over again I'd take them to a commercial stripping outfit and pay the dough to have them tanked. Eagle1 "etching mag wheel cleaner" will also take clearcoat off, but it takes several applications because it's not really designed for that purpose. Once the clearcoat is off and the wheel is polished though, the Eagle1 product works great for keeping it clean.
Seems like on lots of these old wheels the clearcoat is starting to peel off anyway.

 

Well I have some off of my gs and they are really dirty, like that **** that clings on for dear life. What can I use to get that stuff off?

 

what if i use a DA with liek 400 grit? then polish it?

 

a friend of mine used a DA to polish a set of stock alums. i'm not sure which different grits he used in the process though.

 

A DA sander will have minor problems around the lip, otherwise, it will work fine.
I once used a die grinder, with a polishing/sanding attachment originally intend for a drill, and it worked great. Just make sure you don't get too carried away with the rougher grit paper, and all should be fine.

 

karate, eh?

anyway, what kind of place does work like that? i want to get my wheels polished as a part of the rebirth process.

 

I've found that a light spraying with Krylon Acrylic "Crystal Clear" (after cleaning up the wheels real well) does a great job of restoring a lot of the peeled clear coat. It's not perfect, but it's easy to do. makes the wheels look a lot better and a lot easier to clean up and it seems to last a long time - a couple of years of hard use, in my case.

Ray

 

Carfully use a sharp razor blade and peel of the coating, when that is done, I would recomend sanding the rims super smooth, finnishing with at least 800gritt wet sand paper ( wet sanding makes a huge difference). Then get teh best polish you can buy, and with some elbow grease you can get those suckers shining like dimonds.

 

Yeah, you know: "wax-on, wax off..."- "sand the wheel..."

You take 'em to a commercial stripping facility.

(Don't go to one that has a sign that says "Girls! Girls! Girls!")