Repainting rims?

[terrawombat]

I found a set of Ravine rims on CL, but the guy didn't take very good care of them it seems - had them sitting outside for years. The tires are almost brand, spanking new, but the rims have quite a bit of corrosion and clearcoat peeling on the lip. I've never attempted to sand a rim down or repaint it so I'm not sure if it's worth the effort or not. The one pictured below might be the best looking one of the bunch...

 

[dasbulliwagen]

I redid my rims, were almost like that, I used a wire wheel in a drill and wire wheeled the whole outside edge of the rim. Try to keep the wire marks all going in the same direction aound the edge so that when your next step comes.... polishing, it will all look the same. Find some aluminum polish and one of those mothers wheel polish things for your drill, and go to town. After you get the edge polished, you can either clear coat it, or just keep polishing whenever needed. The center part is painted isnt it? Might be a good time to repaint that part too while doing all this work. Good luck.

[terrawombat]

I got pictures of the rest of the rims from the seller...

 

 

 

 

 

[terrawombat]

I redid my rims, were almost like that, I used a wire wheel in a drill and wire wheeled the whole outside edge of the rim. Try to keep the wire marks all going in the same direction aound the edge so that when your next step comes.... polishing, it will all look the same. Find some aluminum polish and one of those mothers wheel polish things for your drill, and go to town. After you get the edge polished, you can either clear coat it, or just keep polishing whenever needed. The center part is painted isnt it? Might be a good time to repaint that part too while doing all this work. Good luck.

 

How did they come out? Yes, I believe the center part of these rims are painted. The paint seems to be in decent shape, for the most part. I'm on the fence with these as they don't come around very often at all...

[dasbulliwagen]

Mine were the lace style limited wheel, but still had the same polished lip like those and painted center. After cleaning them up they turned out nice, I didnt clearcoat mine.... was too wrried that it would start peeling off. Just take your time with the wire wheel to get the corrosion off and smoothed out as good as possible and then hit it with polish. Painting the centers on those, I would use sandpaper to clean up the bad spots, spot prime, wet sand as much as possible on the whole thing and then repaint in your choice of color. Theyll turn out nice!

[87Warrior]

Get them soda blasted, prime, and paint with the Duplicolor wheel paint. Silver or graphite in color.

 

I bought a set of Moabs in much worse condition and spent a lot of time sanding, priming, and painting one wheel. It looks great, but is not butter smooth so I wil get them all soda blasted first to get a smooth base to work with.

 

The stock polished, not painted, moabs on my rubi are getting pretty bad due to rock rash ripping the clear coat off. I will blast and paint them when they are too hideous to look at. All of the newer Moab wheels are painted from the factory.

 

You might not want to use the tires if they sat for long. Don't want dry rot to sneak up on you at 70mph.

[terrawombat]

Ok, I think I'm going to pick them up then. The seller said he would hold them for me and I already have "softer" wire wheel for my drill as well as some metal polish. At the very least, it'll be a good learning experience.

[terrawombat]

You might not want to use the tires if they sat for long. Don't want dry rot to sneak up on you at 70mph.

 

Agreed. If they're dry rotted, I'll throw them on my '88 Pioneer for now, which I use to run errands and go to Home Depot...just waiting for the engine to explode.

[neohic]

I used aircraft stripper on my alum wheels and I think they turned out pretty good. Most labels say to leave it on for about 15-30 minutes, but alum will etch! I left it on in steps of 5 minutes and didn't have any issues. Follow that up with some wet 600 grit and then wet 800 grit sandpaper. After that, polish by hand... figure about an hour per wheel.

[Sir Sam]

for the lip consider taking off the weight(or the tire and weight) mouting them on a drive axle at low speed, and make a mini lathe out of the wheel.

 

Then I would take a 600 grit wetsand paper and let it do the work of stripping and polishing the lip.

 

Then move up to a higher grit and finish with polish.

 

Do it right and you'll get that nicely machined look back.

 

Mask off lip, repaint center, clear coat whole wheel.

 

With some real automotive paint and some real clearcoat with the tire removed you could refinish them very nicely.

 

Personally I would just scrub em really good and throw them on. Then 2-3 years from now when they are really crappy looking refinish them.

[terrawombat]

Great idea! I'm mainly only concerned about the lips at this point. I could care less about the painted centers - they look good enough for my tastes.

 

Don't know why I didn't think of this myself as this is exactly how I polish the lip on the back wheel of my motorcycle. Put it up on the center stand, put it in first, and polish away! Takes practically no time at all...except that pesky stick-on weight doesn't feel too good every time it goes around.

 

Thanks!

[sinkrun]

This does work but if you try it with the tire on be CAREFUL as it will grab anything that touches it(shirts, fingers, toes, etc) much faster than if its just the wheel.

[btm24]

This does work but if you try it with the tire on be CAREFUL as it will grab anything that touches it(shirts, fingers, toes, etc) much faster than if its just the wheel.

 

Amazing! :clapping:

 

Brandon

[terrawombat]

Bought the wheels/tires. Two of the tires are brand new with about 100 miles on them. Third tire looks like it was the spare and also doesn't have many miles on it. Last two tires look like they have well over 50% tread life left. I will measure them later to figure out the exact percentages.

 

Decided to start with the worst of the five rims. This one definitely needs all of the paint stripped off and a repaint. Figured it would be a good rim to practice on in case I screwed up. The rear of my XJ was already up on jackstands to try and locate potential rear u-joint noise so I removed one of the rims, installed the Ravine, put the XJ in 1-2, applied the handbrake a bit so the wheel wasn't turning super fast. Started with 400 grit sandpaper but it simply wasn't doing anything but scratching what clearcoat still remained. Next lowest paper I had was 120 grit, so I gave it a shot. Stuck it to a block of wood and carefully sanded down the clearcoat on the lip. I then went to 400 grit and wet sanded it until it smoothed out. Then I used some metal polish and here are the results:

 

Before:

 

After:

 

Not perfect, but a definite improvement. Like I said before, this wheel needs to have all of the clearcoat and paint stripped off and a repaint.

[JeepcoMJ]

looks pretty good, tho.

 

 

just get some aircraft aluminum stripper, pop the wheels off the rims, strip, wash, sand, call it good

[terrawombat]

looks pretty good, tho.

 

 

just get some aircraft aluminum stripper, pop the wheels off the rims, strip, wash, sand, call it good

 

Thanks. That'll be step 2 sometime down the road. The other four rims don't have much, if any, clearcoat peeling on the painted portion so when I clean those lips up, they should look pretty good - at least good enough to throw them on my '92MJ and call it good for a while.

 

I measured the tread depths just now and compared them to the specs on brand new tires. Three of the tires are Goodyear GS-A's and have between 45-64% tread life left, although it's actually much less than that since I normally replace my tires when they get near 15-20% tread. The other two tires are Goodyear SilentArmor and they both have 94% tread life left, practically brand new. Thinking of taking two of the GS-A's off and buying two new SilentArmor's for four matching tires that are all close in tread life. Could also present a good opportunity to strip those two rims down and repaint them.

[JeepcoMJ]

good idea...

[terrawombat]

Started on another one. Still need to work on it some more with 120 grit to get some imperfections out. Also want to pick up some 600 grit and higher so I can get a smoother finish in the end.

 

Before:

 

 

After:

 

[sinkrun]

Looks good, I have a set of canyons that need done maybe this will get me off my arse and out work on them. Now if we could just get the guys that install and balance tires to put the weight`s on the back side we would not have to deal with this.