Stripping wheels

[naples]

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;

 

[Rich Z]

Man, they look DARN nice! Good job!

 

[Suicide King]

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?

 

[Rich427]

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!

 

[Mark Dalton]

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

 

[MADN3SS]

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.

 

[2Vettes]

Very nice!

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

 

[naples]

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.