Aluminum Polishing...PLEASE HELP!

CutNAction · 04-11-06, 10:46

I am getting extremely frustrated at this point. I recently purchased some un-coated polished aluminum wheels for my Jeep. Well when I first got them they were very dull looking and lacked that luster. I have previously had polished aluminum wheels before and know that they can shine. I have used Mothers Aluminum polish, Wenol, and a variety of other polishes. First I use them by hand with little success. Then I even tried to use them with a foam pad on my PC with no success.

Well today while polishing my stainless steel watch with wenol and my Dremel I noticed that in order to create that shine (give steel and aluminum are 2 different metals) after polishing them up, I had to use (what I believe to be) a wool end for my Dremel. After I had wiped off all the residue I went over it with this wool tip and it shined perfectly! It took away all the haze.

Now my question is....would this also apply to what im trying to achieve with my wheels? If I used say a foam pad and polished my wheels with the products I mentioned and then after wiping the residue went over it with a wool pad on my PC would this achieve a brilliant shine or what it simply not do anything?

Im going crazy not being able to get these bad boys to shining like I know they should be. I know at Autozone and such places they have wool bonnets that I was thinking I could slip over my foam pads for my PC.

Maki · 04-11-06, 02:55

i used a wool pad together with an orbital to polish my aluminum wheels before. works great, just not on tight areas (pad being too big),b ut you have a drmel, so that wouldnt be a problem. the only thing i noticed, is that after using the wool pad on the aluminum, it seems that it "abraded" away some aluminum material so the pad was BLACK, as in really dirty.

goodluck

Twister · 04-11-06, 07:13

on my TTIIs I was having trouble getting them to shine to my liking. No matter what I used or how much I polished I always seemed to be left with some kind of film on them. I could tell it was something that had been on the wheels because I could see what looked like streaks from where something had run down on them. I got to the point where I just wetsanded the wheels with 2000 grit paper and then polished them up by hand with some Mothers billet polish and a MF applicator and buffed with a MF towel. After I finished one and placed it next to the others it was a huge difference. They look better than new and almost like chrome.

Have you thought about using a more abrasive polish like Gords? Maybe that would do the trick

CutNAction · 04-11-06, 08:49

Were your Torque Thrusts uncoated polished aluminum? How long did it take to achieve a shine by hand with the Mothers? Im actually thinking about sanding these down.

Twister · 04-12-06, 07:53

Yes they were uncoated bare aluminum. On 3 of the wheels it took me about an hour each to get them where I was happy with them but that was with taping off areas of the wheels that I didn't want to sand and then cleaning them up and polishing. One of the wheels was pitted up really bad when I bought it so that one took a few hours to get all the pits out. On that one I had to go down to 120 grit paper and work up because I couldn't get a lot of the pits to come out with just the 1000 and 2000 grit paper. I just worked on a wheel when I had the time to take it off the car and sit down and wetsand and polish. Polishing by hand with Mothers once I was done sanding was real easy. Since I finished off with 2000 grit. Polishing itself took 10 minutes. Just make sure to use some MF towels. I used a cotton towel on the 1st wheel and was left with micro scratches. I'm sure it happened before too but since this process made the wheels shine so much more I noticed it a lot more