Ok so my brother bought a set of iroc 16"s for his car and we wanna strip em and go polished first we have a set of 2001 aluminum impala wheels on our beater car a 96 olds 88 were gonna strip and polish those first for practice cause we really don't care if we make a few mistakes on those wheels cause they were free... what's all required and how do you strip and polish an aluminum wheel a list of tools chemicals atc. Would be nice and some detailed instructions? Also if anyone has done this to there wheels got any pics to see how this would look?

 

You can there's a few large threads on the polishing process.

Basically, start with stripper, most use aircraft stripper available at Wal Mart in a gallon can, and strip off the clear coat - put on stripper, leave it like 45 minutes, put on more, wait 45 minutes, once more, wait 45 minutes, and scrape/hose/wipe off - use gloves, it's a mess and it burns skin.

Then start sanding. Wet sanding seems to work best, with a touch of dish washing detergent in the water. Start with 400 grit, then 600, then 800, then 1000, then 2000. You want to sand all the casting marks out (400 grit), then start sanding out the scratches from the 400 grit (600, 800, 1000, 2000). Lastly a nice polishing liquid like White Diamond. The result is a nice almost chrome mirror finish. Some reclear the rims afterwards, some apply wax - I personally just leave mine, and I repolish with the White Diamond every so often.

It's very time intensive - you can only work on 1 wheel a few times a week really - the wet sanding makes for very sore fingers/hands, and you get blisters that make you stop and allow time to heal.