All you people make out polishing wheels to be SO hard to do and SO time-consuming but really, it is about the quickest, easiest thing you could do to make your car look better. You can have all 4 wheels polished in the matter of a few (3-5) hours. I did my IROC wheels and the average person would bet money that they are chromed. Here's how to do it:

1. Start by removing the clearcoat from the areas you are polishing. Just used some Aircraft paint stripper from Wal-Mart.
2. Sand down the really rough SPOTS (curb rash and other gashes) with 400 grit sand paper.
3. Sand the wheel with 600 grit over the areas you just sanded with 400.
4. Sand it all with 1000 grit.
5. Sand with 1500 grit.
6. Get some SEMICHROME metal polish (this is what the Harley guys use on their motorcycles)
7. Put SMALL AMOUNTS of the Semichrome on the wheel and polish, NOT WITH A DREMEL, but with your hand and a paper towell from the kitchen.
8. Wipe off excess polish with a soft cloth.
9. Repeat as needed/wanted

HELPFUL TIPS:
1. When sanding, use 1 poece of sandpaper as long as possible. After you use a the sandpaper for a while, it will build a metallic sheen on it. THIS IS GOOD! The more of a metallic sheen you get on the sandpaper, the higher the grit will actually be! And also, dont wetsand. Wetsanding will take the metallic sheen off of the sandpaper and you wont be able to do nearly as good of a job.
2. DONT use a dremel. It will leave blemishes guarunteed! Using a paper towell and exerting moderate pressure while polishing will give it a more uniform appearance. Looks MUCH better that using a Dremel.
3. NEVER go any lower than 400 grit sandpaper. Anything lower will leave scratches that you will NEVER be able to take completely out. And only use 400 where you must!

I think that's about it. It's really not as hard and time-consuming as people make it out to be. I bought my wheels on a Friday afternoon and started polished the next day at about 10:00 and by 2:00 they were as shiny as they were going to get. I'll have pics soon.

 

Could all that polishing screw with the wheel balance? I know it's a dumb question but I was just wondering.

 

I've wondered about that too. You are taking away some metal when you sand and all but I've never heard anything about it being enough to screw up the balance. Who knows? That's something I dont have an answer for.

 

No offense to you black_widdow, but I completly disagree with your writeout. It is for the most part right, but missing a very large part.

1. Start by removing the clearcoat from the areas you are polishing. Just used some Aircraft paint stripper from Wal-Mart. - True.

2. Sand down the really rough SPOTS (curb rash and other gashes) with 400 grit sand paper. -- Wrong, 400 is a very high grit. In fact, you can get a very shiny look from nothing more than going up to 400. That will not take out cast marks, unless your wheel has no cast marks. Which would mean it's aftermarket or a freak of nature.

3. NEVER go any lower than 400 grit sandpaper. Anything lower will leave scratches that you will NEVER be able to take completely out. And only use 400 where you must!
-- false. It is very easy to take out scratches below 400, all you do is go up a step higher than the one that made the scratches. On one of my wheels, I went as low as 80, but the end, the only scratches left were ones by 1500 mark. Without going below 400, you will not take cast off... without ALOT of sanding. I can show you what cast looks like if you wish, or what I'm talking about.

Now, I'd like to see your wheels, and they may be shiny, but far from a chrome look. Without buffing wheels, and compounds, it will take much longer than 8 hours. By hand it won't simply be enough.



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HOWEVER, I wish you do prove me wrong with these pictures, and make a fool of my above statements, that way when I start my next wheel I can finish it much faster. I wish it was only 400 grit that was needed. Be sure to take close up pictures with a good digital camera.

Once again, no offense to you... just have not had the same results that you have with your above method.

 

I'm just speaking from my personal experience. I've done it my way and your way.
It is very difficult, if not impossible, to get curb rash or other large gashes out of a wheel. If you go below 400, and you finally DO get it out, there will be so much metal taken away that it will look worse than it did WITH the curb rash or gash. Note that I am talkign about LARGE gashes. Going below 400 grit really isn't necessary. Going lower than 400 will just cause more scratches for you to later work out with higher grit paper. Using the 600-1000-1500 method I spoke of will take off all old metal you will ever need to remove before polishing to a mirror, chrome-like appearance. Just think, why use 150 grit and cause unnecessary scratches that you will later have to sand and sand and sand to remove? I assure you that there are no scratches left in my wheels (except for the one I used 150 grit on) and it looks like chrome, by far the shiniest polished wheels I've ever seen on thirdgen.org or in person. I'm not trying to put you down or your way of polishing, I'm just trying to tell of a better way to do it from my own experiences. Now I just need some tires so I can get the things on my car.
Matt, didn't you have some decent tires on those Z28 wheels you were trying to sell me? do you want to get rid of them?

 

Sounds like a great, cost-effective solution, Widow....please, pics!

 

I have a can of Aircraft Remover, and it says not to get it on rubber or plastic. I have tires mounted on my wheels, has anyone tried this without dismounting the tires.
I dont want to have the car out of commision while doing the wheels.

Cheers

Richard

 

Because, you'll have cast. Cast cannot be removed by 400 grit without a large amount of time sanding. Much longer than just going 120-180-220-320-400

Yes, I did have some wheels for sale, but now I'm going to polish them myself and sell them probably. I had started on one around nov, but since then it got too cold to go do it. Especially when wetsanding.

I'll try your way... and I'll take step by step pictures. I truly hope your right when you say 400 can get cast off, but something tells me it won't.

As far as shinest wheel... check out TPI383... I believe he/she did it the old way. Also, most people who did their plenum also did it the old way. I'm by no means saying your wrong, because I have not seen the wheel, or even tried your method. So I have no right to say that... but from past experience I have found that going below 400 is needed to get cast off. I will try it as soon as I go get some food and come back.

 

What's cast? Is it curb rash?

 

Ok it took me 1 hour and 45 minutes to do this rim.I used 120 grit sanding rolls on everything except for the outter ring of the rim.Steped up to 400 grit smoothed out nearly all scratches,the got my da sander out and used some 320 grit sand paper on as much of the rim as possible.After i Finished I got out my polishing wheels that I attach to my die grinder.They are a blue wheel made of carbon fibers a rough cloth wheel,and a buffing wheel.I used some special grease from work"I cant say what it is"but its equivilant is Mothers aluminum polish,I know i've used both.Went over every part of the rim and 45 min of this and the rim looked like this.

 

Cast is the texture look. Get real real close to your wheel, you'll see small lines, in a plenum and intake and such it'll look like a rough finish. When GM makes the products, they have a machine that does all of it. It leaves these marks. The only way to remove them is to sand them off, and it can take quite sometime with a high grit. Which is why 180 is recommend, it takes them off quickest, and you can step up one from that remove the 180 scratches... and so on.

I'll take a photo real quick of what cast looks like.

 

The rough texture is from when the foundry pours the aluminum into a mold made of tarsand of some kind? dont know what its really called.The texture of that sand is what makes the rough casting get its texture from when the foundry pours the aluminum.The rough casting looks like sand paper.The stuff that looks sorta shiny is where GM put the rims on a CNC Lathe,it made the lines in the shiny part of the rim when they machined them.

 

Here is a picture of the plenum with cast on it.

As for the rim, I needed more light (it's in my garage) and I needed a closer shot.. which I didn't feel like doing it. Take a look at your rim sometime, it has very very small lines. To make a perfect shine, you must get rid of all of those.

 

Ok, thanks a lot! So you have to get the texture stuff off. Thanks ion! Oh, nice rim, I want to do the exact same thing to my rims! Thanks a lot everybody. Eric

 

polishing is a great way to make anything look nicer; but it can't compare to chrome.

i'll put any polished wheel up to mine to prove it.

 

Just one question- with the textured wheels as shown, is it possible to get the chromed look? I have brake dust corrosion of some sort, and I want to know whether I can remove that from a textured wheel using clearcoat stripper and sandpaper.

 

Yes, you would be able to remove that with sandpaper. I'm doubt it's pass the clearcoat. Try stripping the clear first.

 

I dont see any lines on the spokes themselves, but here and there I see some on the rim of the wheel. That's just because I didn't spend as much time on the rim as the spokes. My method should and will take off the cast, at least on an IROC wheel. I have an early thirdgen Z28 wheel outside (you know, the one that is like the later RS wheels, but just textured (cast) and yes, on THAT wheel you would have to use a lower grit paper to get it out, but on an IROC wheel, you're just causing yourself more trouble going with anything lower than 400. Has anybody here ever taken machine shop? They teach this in machine shop.
Matt, are you sure you dont want to get rid of the tires from the Z wheels?!?!

 

Tires... tires were sold about 2 months ago for 300$.

Wheels are left, but I'm going to polish them unless someone has a decent offer to buy them.

 

Oh well, I just need the tires!
I still haven'y found any casting on my IROC wheels. Maybe IROC wheels never had it. But I did go outside earlier and polish part of an RS wheel and those have some casting. I took it off with 320 grit in no time. After I finished it upp with 600-100-1500, I polished it and it's comparable to my polished IROCs. But still, even with casting, I would NEVER go past the 320 I used. 230 150 and 80, well, I would hate to get the scratches out it would leave behind. Maybe on my IROC wheels below the paint there might be some casting so the paint would stick better, but on the spokes there's none at all, so my method would work just fine.

 

Do you have any pictures?I would like to see how good your polish is.

 

85t089,
If you were talking to me, no, I dont have any pics yet. I'm waiting to get the wheels put on the car and then I'll have pics of the finished product.

 

When doing my wheels it was not absolutely necessary to go down to 320 like I did, BUT it was much faster than trying to sand all the markings out with a higher grit paper. I went 320-600-?? Guess 1000 is my next step....

 

I don't think you could polish your wheels in 1hr unless you are running over them VERY quickly. Each of mine have taken mulitple hours of sanding, then again I have made sure to hit EVERY spot. (including the rim)

 

What kind of wheels are you polishing? I'm mainy speaking of the 16x8 IROC wheels.

 

Hey Black Widdow I machined the angles flat on my test rim.The spot that I circled is where I tried to make the ball nose endmill flush with the surface that I milled. Then I made it worse when I tried to smooth the deper marks that it put in.The top spot is flat though but not as shinny as before, I really didnt try hard to shine it up as good. Hey you can see my hands and the dig camera in the reflection

 

Iroc rims would me a joke to polish compared to the 91 style. They don't have those stupid machine lines in them and they don't have the deep lip to polish. I can see why some people don't use a rougher grit because you don't have to take the metal down very far. On The newer rims you have to get rid of lot of material before you can start the polishing process.

 

Polished rims take alot longer then 8hrs to do right and Nice.


Dirty here but POLISHED..