I have the buffing set from eastwood. The sanding part iam not worried about its buffing it out so I get the shine. I saw this thing that I can attach to the side of the buffer and its like a small air grinder. I wonder if I put a buffing wheel on that maybe I could buff the wheel out.
-Brandon

 

Well for the small places, the best thing is to get an air die grinder (that runs off of compressed air) and buffing attachments as seen here in the detail buffing section: http://www.eastwoodco.com/jump.jsp?i...3&iSubCat=1475

 

those wheels look **** after cleaning them, im getting some ws6 wheels very soon, now i know how i plan on cleaning them the first time

 

You know just the other day I was wondering to myself why anyone would wanna do all the work to polish a set of wheels when they could just have chrome which looks SOOO much better. But after seeing the pics of these wheels I have to just say WOW. I'm really impressed. Very distinctive looking. In fact, these look so good that I think I'm gonna reneg on my opinion about chrome and say I actually like the way wheels look polished better.

Thanks, you've made a believer out of me.

 

They look alot better than they did, but still not like my chrome ones that I use every day.

 

Here they are next to my daily driver chrome versions:



Just for comparison I think the polished are damn close.

 

can i do this to my stock painted camaro ss ten spokes

 

You should be able to, but it will require alot more work/tools getting the raw aluminum ready to be polished.

 

i cant do that to my rims can i, 01 and 02 trans am rims. couldnt remeber but there polished so i didnt think you could. let me know

 

Why would i have more upkeep do that to my rims. Would I have to those steps say every few months.By the way your rims look great

 

- Chrome is a metal plating. Think of it like paint, but metal. So it's easy to keep up, very forgiving, but really problematic if that metal layer is ever damaged (rash, corrosion through, etc.).

- Polished wheels like these are just plain aluminum, buffed to a very fine surface finish to give a very shiny appearance. Without any protective coating (clear coat or zoopseal) the aluminum will oxidize rather quickly and give a clouded appearence. This is why factory polished rims are clear coated. But as you've seen the factory polish isn't very fine, and the clearcoat costs some shine as well.

- Trying to do this to factory painted wheels would be an absolute nightmare, because under that paint the wheels are typically just as-cast. No effort to smooth the aluminum anywhere near a polished appearance has been made. If you strip the paint off of some aluminum wheels you'd be greeted with all sorts of casting conditions from very rough (almost like sand) and maybe even find smoothing filler akin to Bondo to smooth the wheels out before paint. And trying to get the wheel polished to a uniform flatness and the appropriate level would take a silly amount of work.

 

Are 01 & 02 17" wheels? If they are, you can do it to yours too because they are polished with a layer of clear coat.

 

Polished wheels require that you polish them every few weeks as needed to keep the shine from oxidizing and hazing. The clear coat that I stripped off, helped prevent that from happening, but it also made the wheels look hazy all the time.

Chrome wheels only require that you wash them, but no WS6 wheels ever came from GM chrome plated only a few 16" versions (would say ABS on the center cap and have 16" tires lol).

If you are unsure if you have polished or plated or painted wheels... take a pic and post it here and we can tell you.

 

I know what I'm gonna do this Saturday! Thanks Roll Tide TA. I've the 01-02 wheels and they need this bad! I like the older WS-6 wheels better, but maybe I can fall in love with these once I shine'em up. Thanks for the write up and from one Tide fan to another, have a Roll Tide day!

 

Oh you're welcome man! Roll Tide!

 

Nice write up and the wheels look great..

 

well I could'nt wait for Sat. So I stripped 2 today after work.I have a commercial pressure washer and that seems to have been a big plus to blast them. It was getting dark but from what I saw I am in shock just seeing them 2 stripped. Darn.!!

 

Thats what we suspected! And there really is a huge difference from just the stripping process. I think my pressure washer money was spent on headers.... oh well

 

I read this thread and 30 minutes later I owned the stuff to do it...Here is the stuff I bought...this all look like the stuff you used?

 

I did one of my WS6's wheels last Friday after reading this thread. It had several places on it where the clearcoat was long gone. It looked bad but it looks great now! Thanks for the write up... very inspiring!

I used some generic paint stripper I purchased at Lowe's for about 8 bucks, a 75 cent paint brush, some Mothers aluminum and metal polish I picked up at Autozone, a garden hose and sprayer, a Dewalt corded drill, and some polishing wheels of various sizes that I picked up at Northern Tool.

I am worried about how long this wheel will stay shiny, although the polishing was pretty easy.

What's this zoop stuff you speak of?