Well, its been about four hours now.. on my first rim. Its a bent Iroc rim that came on my car.. im doing it for practice..

i was originally going to strip the rim of paint and clearcoat entirely.. I used paint and clearcoat remover first, and then sanded, repeated the process..

AND IM NOT DONE YET!

the paint is taking forever to come off.. I was going to go with a totally polished look.. but not anymore.. when i go to do the rest of my rims, i will wetsand all of the paint down to a baby-but smooth finish and repaint them.. then wetsand again until a satin finish (400 grit should do it i hope). I will totally strip the open aluminum parts and polish them, but im not gonna fight the paint again.. im just gonna polish up the open aluminum on this bent rim until i think im good enough at it and then start on the rest of my rims.


BTW, people, post your home-polished stock rims! I will when i am done

 

polishing wheels was a PITA when I did my formula wheels. I will NEVER do it again. You could spend the same # of hours working OT at work, then use the cash to BUY a set of aftermarket 17's.

jmo....

 

as long as i dont try to get the paint off it isn't seeming to go to bad.. it is taking a lot of time, but im getting some pride from it.. im wetsanding them right now, and they are turning out beautifully

 

https://www.thirdgen.org/newdesign/t...iowheels.shtml

my tech article, before and aft. pics of my rims when i owned the roc.

 

yah, i read that one, along with every other article i could find im just trying to figure out how I want to do it.. hehe

i really wish i could get all the paint of easily, but im not finding anything that will take it off.. oh well, it will look good painted and polished

 

Make sure you use the liquid paint stripper - not the spray one. MUCH more concentrated. Also, coat it a few times then let it sit...

good luck!

 

man when i did mine i just used regular old paint stripper and it took everything off with three light coats and a total of 30 min
then i gave them a light pass with the 180 to clean up the minor scratches then on to the 320 and 400 wet

two guy's 24 beers 1 lg pie
two rims stripped and sanded polished (in a about a day)
the repaint took longer and another 12 beer's

just be sure to take your time with the emery the more you hit it the better it'll turn out we must have spent like 2-3 hr's playing with just the emery before the white rouge and triple were even touched

i'll try and take a few good picture's this weekend for you

just take your time and
good luck

 

90* die grinder and 2" 3M Roloc surface conditioning discs make it about an hour per wheel to strip and prep for polishing. Heavy duty sanding discs remove the majority of the paint, then the woven mesh discs to clean up the scratches for ploishing compounds can be used. It usually takes me 3-4 hours to sand down and totally polish a TPI unit including runners using these discs as well as a 4" flap disc on the angle grinder. I'm actually going to strip and polish my GTA style wheels this fall too...

Harbor Freight Tools usually has what you would need in stock...

 

ima make sure i have a one rim per day limit

 

Get some aircraft stripper douse the wheels in it and let it sit overnight poof no more paint!

If your planning on finishing... plan on spending alot of time with sandpaper. Once your done you'll never want to do it again.. but you'll be damn glad you did it!!

If your going on a one wheel a day limit... uhmm.. plan on spending ALL day, I don't want to think about it too much but I would say I have well over 100 hours in my wheels with sanding polishing taping and painting..

 

In my book, 100 hours of OT is worth WELL over $2k...plus I'll stll have the skin on my fingers. LOL. Of course, this $ figure would vary depending on what kind of job you have.

 

well, i make about $8 an hour as a CNA (underpaid but i work nights so i can play video games all night and get paid for it). I get in an average of 28 hours a week. I work the weekends only, so i have my weeks free. So $2k for rims (right now at least) is out of the question. I have some things to buy for my engine, i need to redo my rearen, shift kit in my tranny, completely redo the interior, build a stereo system, buy a new bumper (bad crack) and pretty much all of my ground effects (chipped bad and such), and i have to get a paint job. I either will spend $2.5-3k on it or i (and a couple friends of the family) will do it myself... (depends)..
I want to get all of this done.. by May of next year, so i have some work out ahead of me. I am also doing some medical Studies and they range from $700 to $3800, depending.. So I wont have much to spare for new rims.. I also need new tires, ima buy a new $2500 laptop, and im going to have to buy a winter beater within the next month and a half or so..

 

Yea.. I dont make $20 an hour tax free... I was in school full time and unemployed, usually sanded at night or on weekends. you can make your own hours on projects but not on work.

 

unless u are REALLY lucky (work for parents or just a very flexible understanding job) Basically never happens tho. I damn for damn sure that it is gonna take me a lot longer than i plan to, but the time i have it set for is my dream for it.. hehe