rediesel

So my wheels were looking pretty rough. They were factory 16" with a machined aluminum face with silver paint everywhere else. The clear coat over the Al face had failed several places and allowed the surface to corrode. First step was to remove the clear and paint with Airplane stripper. After this I sanded them with a dremel sanding wheel and 320 grit sandpaper until there was no clear, paint, or primer left on the surface. (Actually I tried to leave a little primer in the inset areas and paint them, but the result wasn't smooth so I had to strip it off and sand the primer completely off - at this point I decided to polish the insets too).

So after all the clear, paint and primer had been removed from the surface of the wheel and the insets, I sanded with 320, 400, 600, 1000, and 2000 grit sandpaper making sure to completely sand everything at each step.

I then got Mother's Al polish and some polishing wheels on my drill (I used the Mother's Ball and cone but fabric wheels worked better) and polished the wheels. I finished by using Griots Heavy Duty Metal polish on a Random Orbital and hand polished as well. Here are the results.

I probably spent 100 hours doing this which was stupid. First these were my winter wheels so they weren't that important, second I had them on my car about 3 hours before I traded it in.