Stripping wheels

When I bought my car it had painted wheels. Shortly there after I put on zinc coated rotors that looked better than the wheels. I bought four thin spokes that were scratched up and had a lot of blemishes and clear cracking off in places. The barrels of the wheels looked really bad. I went to Home Depot and bought some paint stripper and some MEK (Metyl Ethyl Ketone) to rinse with and removed the clear with the tires still on the rims. I still have some more work to do on them but I am so busy with my job I have very little spare time. Up to this point it took about 4 hours for each wheel. Also polished with Mothers on a drill with a buffing wheel attached.
Here are some pics;

Man, they look DARN nice! Good job!

Wow! From the pics they look brand new. How did you get the inside of the rim to shine like that? Did you just polish them?

Naples,

Are you planning on leaving them the way they are now, or are you going to re-clear coat them? If you are going to leave them please let us know how the wheels hold up without the protection of the clear coat!

Good Job!

Good job, they look better than new.:thumbsup:

Wow, that's a major shine. Reminds me of how I wanted to take mine off and clean them! Dammit! Something else to go on the list once it cools down.

Very nice!
I'm interested too in what you're going to do now. Re-clear coat or leave them bare?

I got the final shine with Mothers aluminum polish and a 4 inch spiral sewn buffing wheel mounted on a drill. You have to polish them like billet aluminum on a Harley. I don't plan on clear coating them, I may use some Zoop seal that was recomended to me. http://www.zoops.com Remember my wheels looked pretty bad so anything I did was an improvement.