theraymondguy

My wheels have heavy corrosion.

I’m already stretching my spending budget on the car for this summer with new exhaust and other bits to get it ready for a safety inspection.

Rather than have them refinished at a wheel shop, is there something I can do at home to get rid of the corrosion on the aluminium without harming its finish?

i have access to a compressor and a variety of tools, though none are body work based.

Thanks,

Rob.

navy02ws6

You can try some fine steel wool. If those wheels ever had any clearcoat it'll cut through it though.

Kincer

If there is clear coat still on the wheels the only way to get them looking good again is to get the clear coat off, polish the aluminum and re clear them. I've done it to another style of wheels, it's a lot of work but very well worth it and rewarding, I used aircraft stripper to remove the clear but it's still time consuming, and polishing is very time consuming. the aircraft stripper I used was kind of thick and I was able to save the painted portions of my wheels because the stripper stays where you put it, I just started a wheel and that forced me to do the rest. I'm sure professionals have quicker ways to do it and they may have videos on Youtube about it, I never checked I just did it. As I said earlier they weren't T/A wheels but they were cleared and had painted sections.

jharrison5

It's totally doable, but like others have already stated, it's a lot of work. I am in the process of refinishing my '87 IROC wheels, but they're in horrible condition and will need to be soda blasted to get all the junk off of them.

I would start with a good quality 600 grit silicon carbide paper on a block and go to town until all the corrosion is gone, then clean with dish soap, paint prep solution, or isopropyl alcohol. Move up grits as you go along cleaning the wheels in between. After the 2500-3000 grit range you can polish the shiny bits, tape them off and paint the inside bits, and then clear all of the wheel or just the painted portion.

FYI Silicon carbide is good for softer metals and Aluminum Oxide is good for harder metals, but I've used Aluminum Oxide on softer metals and the results have been good.

theraymondguy

Thank you for the replys. Would the wheels have had clear coat from the factory?

I'm going to save this for the winter months and revisit it.

Cheers!

Kincer

They should have clear on them from the factory, unless someone already removed it, from your pics it looks like its still there. One way to tell would be to clean the wheel really good with a good wheel cleaner then take some mothers aluminum polish and rub on an area that looks like bare aluminum if your rag turns black there’s no clear on it.

theraymondguy

If I revive a thread I started it’s not a faux pas right?

my attempt to make factory T/A wheels presentable:

320, 600, 1000 grit, then mother’s mag polish.

Jaysz28

iTrader: (30)

Nice job!

almost makes me want to do that to my iroc wheels!

TOM305T/A

good job. how did it take to do wheel

theraymondguy

Thanks, a couple of hours for the first one. I’m going to step up my game and pick up a small sander / polisher and redo it up to 2000 at least now that I got proof of concept. I like not having to deal with stripper or harming the paint.