4 replies to this topic

[PhilipGCaldwell]

Just a quick one
Im going to restore some superlight alloy wheels soon, just to check, can i use nitromors to get the old paint off? will it damage the alloy in any way?
I know people will come back and say "get them bead blasted" but frankly i cant afford it at £20 per wheel (thats the cheapest of 3 quotes i have), a tin of nitromors is only £5

[Hekmat]

I cleaned mine with nitromors and brass brush (with gentle pressure) and it turned out fine. It depends on what you are going to do afterward, are you painting them or polishing them?

If painting then you can cover any marks from the brush with primer and paint, if polish it would require some elbow grease and fine sand paper to get a good finish.

[PhilipGCaldwell]

the plan was to nitromors them then steam clean all the nitro residue off then respray with rattle cans

[MRA]

It also depends on the material used......... people used to use permanent marker pens on alluminium alloy instead of engineers marker blue to mark up a job for machining, it was then found that the chemicals within the pens are corrosive to alloys and banned throughout the industry.

Ok so you aren't flying anyplace soon in your Mini (hopefully) however the corrosive action of nitromors can clearly be seen if you leave a tin in the garden shed for 6 months or so, it is highly unlikely that you will be able to clean all traces from your wheels, your wheels could then fail, with the resultant carnage etc..... at the very least it would cost you less in the long run to bead blast them.

Ok that may be excessive, however if you choose to take that chance it's up to you..

[Chris_R]

Does the old paint really need to come off? I'd just clean it up thoroughly and then key it ready for painting over.