21 replies to this topic

[mini-man-dan]

Hi All

After some advice on repolishing my wheels.

Have bought a set of Ultralites 10x6 and they have a deep polished lip. The laquer has lited in some aeas and they need a good going over.

I'd like some advice on how to take back the laquer damage, repolish and relaquer. How have you done it? Any recommended products or materials?

Cheers
Dan

[Benjy25]

mini man dan, i would love to also know the answer to this

[mike.]

Well heres how I did it - This is going to be pretty lengthy with lots of pictures.

Obviously theres no way you can remove the look of peeling lacquer of lacquer with air/water under it, without stripping the lacquer off to get to the surface to be polished.

I started off with a very peeled set of alloys. As you can see the lacquer is peeling all over and air/water has got under it etc



So I used nitromors to strip the paint and lacquer off the wheels:



Then your left with just your bare alloy. So you need to remove any corrosion that has occurred - If the lacquers peeled it means water will have been trapped under it and will of corroded the alloy. For this I used wet&dry with soapy water and just went round the dish until the corrosion was gone and i'd got a uniform even shine all the way round. Don't use any paper too harsh as you'll scratch the alloy worse than it needs and you'll need to spend more time polishing to get those scratches out. I'm pretty sure I used 400 grade paper for this:



Then you can start bringing the shine back by polishing. I can recommend the budget polishing kit from this place: Link

Its cheap and has all you need - All you need is a decent drill - Preferably a mains powered drill.

The kit comes with half decent instructions but basically you use the polishing 'mops' with their suited compound to remove imperfections from the surface. You start with the harsh stitched mop and black compound and start going round the wheel with hard pressure, then again with medium pressure and again with lighter pressure, as many times as is needed to get an even shine to the whole wheel. Once all the harsh sanding marks and things are removed, you can move onto the lighter compound and continue in the same way.

Heres my wheels after the a couple rounds with the harsh mop:



Then after a few more times with less pressure:



As you can see it brings the shine back really well and the other finer mops just continue to improve this shine. This is after the medium mop and compound:





Then the final fine cottom mop and compound, if you do it right and take your time, you can get a mirror finish:





Reflections of reflections:




I'd say I probably spent maybe 2-3 hours on each wheel from start to finish and the majority of that time was the polishing; but the results speak for themselves.

After that, i'm planning on spraying the centres of the wheels to match the colour of the car, but im choosing not to relacquer the polished dish of the rims.

Purely because the lacquer hasn't got alot to stick to now the surface is perfectly smooth, and its only going to peel off again and i'd be back to square one. You just need to make sure you keep the dish clean and waxed to protect the alloy from corrosion.

Hope this helped.

[mattsbmw]

pretty much as said above, when i did mine i used 1200 wet and dry on the lip which was enough to remove the corrosion and give a surface to polish, then i used a dremel with autsol on one of the pads and the rim is like a mirror now

[Pooky]

Wowee! Those are some shiney shiney wheels! nice work!

[Danny_California]

Great reponse man, I'm so glad you posted that. You should see the state on my Ultralights definately going to give this a try.

[Danny_California]

Thought I'd share my progress on here aswell. Dont have a brilliant before picture, but I do have one from last years IMM, and they looked as good as they could here because they're been scrubbed! So normally a lot worse, and since then over the winter they have gotten even worse, this was the worst wheel on the car, and one of the most badly corroded I've ever seen


And heres the same wheel today after about an hour with the first two steps, nitro-mors and 600 grade wet and dry:



I'm surprised to be honest, never thought they'd look that good again. And thats before any polishing or waxing! I've bought that polishing kit mentioned above and some rim wax for when they're all done, I'm gonna hunt now for the fake bolts that go around the rim

[skaterava]

I'm probably going to be doing this to two sets of wheels (my current 12x6's and a set of 12x5's chromies i have lying around). Is it possible to strip just the rim of the wheel down and polish, without damaging the paint already on the spokes?

[Danny_California]

Thats exactly what I've done mate, if done with a brush its pretty easy to control where the nasty stuff goes. Its really satisfying when you make progress so quickly. I got my polishing kit today, very impressed by the speed of that website, I didnt even pay for next day delivery

[skaterava]

Alrightey, i'll pick up some nitromors on Friday and get cracking

[Danny_California]

Good luck dude, post back here when you're done! Just finished polishing one of mine, I'm more than happy with it now even if its not quite as mirror finish as mikes, better than original and more to my taste.
Just waiting on rimwax before putting it back on the car.

[mini_mad69]

They look great danny, I might have a go at this, my laquer is staying strong at the moment, but I want that mirror shine.

[skaterava]

Right, just tried the Nitromors and i t has had no effect...the laquer/paint is holding on. There's no blistering to the paint or anything!

[skaterava]

Bumpety bump. Could someone help me out? I bought the green bottle of Nitromors (Paint and varnish remover), but it won't take the chrome coating off, even though the laquer is lifting and the whole alloy is ruined.

[Crowson_punk]

Are they chrome or powder coated? Powder coating can take an age to lift with nitromors, I actually find the cheaper paint and varnish remover you get from hardware stores works better, you do need to keep it wet though.

The trick is to whack it on and keep swilling more on. Don't get it on your skin when it's got paint in it though, burns like hell!!!!

If they're chrome it wont touch it as the chrome is metal plated to it. only way to remove that is with blasting.

Jon.