I just bought some IROC wheels for autocross, and there are three gold wheels and one grey wheel and the clear coat is peeling off so I figured I will try and clean them up. I've heard of sandblasting but I was wondering if that would be to abrasive for the aluminum wheels. Then I talked to my dad and he told me a guy he works with blasts stuff with dry-ice. He said the guy uses tiny beads of dry-ice to clean stuff. He said the guy has already used it on a co-workers race car (used it to take off the undercoating on his Porsche which saved I think he said 10 pounds). Anyone think this would or would not work? I'll have my dad talk to him next week and see what he has to say.

 

You can always just get paint stripper (not paint thinner, it won't work on automotive paint). It can be expensive though, especially if you just want to do your wheels, but yet I would think dry ice would be expensive too. I used paint stripper and a wire wheel on a drill to strip/polish my rims. and yea sand blasting would leave you with an ugly pore-ish look.

 

The place my dad and this guy work sells dry ice and since they are employees they can get it at cost so it isn't that bad. My dad talked to the guy and he said it should be ok and that it might even polish the wheels a bit and smooth out some of the minor road rash. I'm also lucky because he said since I'm just a kid (16) and he gets along with my dad really well that he would give me a deal on it. Never said how much of a deal but I dont expect to have to pay much since my dad also told him I dont need them done for about another month or two, so he can wait and do it with another job.