did a search no luck has anyone striped the paint from a 15" Camaro wheel and then buffed it out so it was a 100% polished alum wheel if so how does it look, some pics would be nice im talking about this style wheel not the IROC style

i tried once. they dint look that great its better to just strip them and repaint them to factory.

Had those very same wheels in red on my 89. I needed some temporary winter wheels for the 92, but red wasn't the right color. I thought about polishing them, but I considered the amount of work and maintenance required for a winter only wheel wasn't worth it. I stripped and repainted them black. I'm quite satisfied with the result, but they come off around income tax time in favor of new wheels and tires. It was suggest to me to chrome them, but that was also a bit on the pricey side - I have less than $100 invested, plus the time it took to strip and paint.

Pictures show before, interim and black, then on the car.

my black 91 came with black paint but my blue 90, which is still have - i just went to look before writing this, has no paint at all. but i never polished them out. that which is polished has to be kept polished, and im too lazy. they clean up nice as they are.

i aint worried about the polishing, the guy who polished all the aluminum on my truck can get it to look like a mirror and it lasts about a year on over the road (3,000 a week) conditions

i would still like to see a set polished

i want to see what those black ones would look like on my car... any opinions?

yea that was my other thought to go with the black ones

I've polished two sets for cars I used to have.... it is hard work, but looks amazing. Other than the performance benefits of a 16" wheel, the Z28 wheel looks as good or better when fully polished.

I don't have very many pics, and no good ones that show the mirror finish, but here is one I found:

Here is another crappy picture... the car was absolutely filthy, but you can see the difference between the front wheel which was polished and the rear wheel which is painted.


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yea i got a friends with a 15" that he is willing to donate to me

i will strip it and than take it to the alum polisher that did my wheels and alum on my big truck and get him to polish them.......see what we got-

i just bought a set off of ebay to replace my 16 in iroc rims.... i know sounds weird but i just love the look of white letter radials on a muscle car and i plan to polish only the lip and leave the rest painted silver. ill post pics when im done =)

SUBSCRIBE! ive always wanted to see these wheels polished or chromed just never had the guts to do it

well hopefully i will be geting a junk wheel from a guy next weekend and working on polishing it out so we will have to see

I think black wheels would look great on your car. Keep the white letters tho.

Ask for a photoshop, someone might be able to help you.

as promised, photos of the wheels i got with a polished rim. the pictures kinda suck because its real cloudy and rainy right now in toledo (surprise), but you get the idea. also, they are for sale and are going on ebay right now if anyone is interested. hope this gives you an idea of how they would look if you polished them!

they turned out good

I'm working on repolishing a set right now. Someone used a chemical cleaner on the wheels that dulled them and turned the metal a milky white. Here's a pic of one that I've almost finished. Once these are done they will be going up for sale.

dang now that looks good!!!!!!!!!!

you got any pics of those on the car? and how did you do it?

There's a tech article, or thread, of a guy that did a write up on polishing rims. I think he used the IROC wheels though. I'm going to be doing this to my 87 Formula wheels sometime soon. Already have the stripper, just have to find the time to actually get the work done.

I think I have a pic of them on the car...I'll have to try to find it. As for how I did it, just do a search for "polishing rims". There are quite a few threads on it. Since mine had already been polished I skipped the sanding part and just doing the buffing and shining part. Here's the page I've been following http://www.gmtips.com/3rd-degree/dox.../info/info.htm

did you use a grinder for the middle of the spokes to make them smooth? mine is all bumby in there, thats more what my question was getting at.

Third gen camaro rims have no place on a muscle car..

i would love to sell my rims, i hate the way they look.. this thread ALMOST changes my mind.

Well like I said before the rims were polished previously and I'm just rebuffing them. I'm using a Makita electric die grinder and made a speed control using a plastic 2 gang electric box, an electric outlet and a dimmer switch. The Makita spins at one speed which is about 25,000 rpms and I wanted to be able to control the rpm's.

To smooth out the rough area's I would use sandpaper starting with 180 then 320 and 400. I would use flapper wheels and/or different sizes and shapes of cartridge rolls to smooth everything out. After that you would start buffing with buffing wheels and compounds.