Restoring factory turbine wheels

[sinkrun]

Anyone have any ideas on restoring a set of factory turbines that are in sad shape and pealing. Could these be blasted and painted like the newer jeep aluminum wheels.

[Wildman]

Yea.......CWLongshot did this in his project build.......this should be the page.....

 

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1230&hilit=cleaning+rims&start=255

 

About 3/4 the way down the page ;)

[DJM/78]

Yeah, you should be able to refinish them . I polish all kinds of metal . Aluminum is actually really easy to polish , just takes forever .

 

Best bet is to strip them with chemicals and see what comes off . It will bleach the metal but you will polish that right back out .

 

Start with 220 sand grit, work your way up to about 800 wet or dry . Then start with 3M rubbing compound, until a mild polish

occurs , then mothers the hell out of it , to a bright finnish .

 

Finnish will last a wile before you have to polish again . There are some coating options though .

[Eagle]

Anyone have any ideas on restoring a set of factory turbines that are in sad shape and pealing. Could these be blasted and painted like the newer jeep aluminum wheels.

Blasting and painting would not be "restoring" them. The outer rim and the faces of the spokes should be polished bright. The sides of the spokes and the rough areas between the spokes should be painted a matte, medium gray.

 

I plan to try doing one when the weather warms up a bit, using Aircraft Stripper from Auto Zone to remove the existing clear coat. This will also remove the gray between the spokes, so I'll have to repaint that, then polish the flats, then clearcoat the whole enchilada.

[socal1200r]

I polished an aluminum motorcycle frame by hand, back when I was young and dumb, lol! I used oven cleaner and steel wool to remove the clearcoat, and 0000 steel wool and Mother's to polish it. Took me about 20 hours to do it, and was high maintenance to keep it shiny afterwards, since I didn't clearcoat it. Would I do it again? Definitely NOT, it was too much work to do it and keep it shiny.

 

If it was me, I'd just take them to a shop and let them do it. They can strip the old clearcoat, and you could get them either powdercoated or painted, and polished in the right places.

[sinkrun]

I am thinking along the lines of what eagle mentioned unless polishing the faces gets to be to much. A shop I worked for years ago had a lathe they would fit in not sure what he would charge to skim cut the face I am going to have to check with him. For the time being I am going to try CWs coil cleaner I have nothing to loose.