How would you re-finish Billet rims?

[Preachers Sheets]

I am going to try to re-finish a set of Billet (raw alum) rims myself. Time isn`t an issue, I have lots of it.



The rims are not that bad, the inside obviously is a little worse than the face. The lip`s have a little bit of pitting that you can see from one foot away.



Can I use this procedure:



Spray some sort of stripper on them that would be used to remove clearcoat, just for a cleaning.



Sand the rims down with a multi stage process of tougher grit to smoother?



The other idea is to pay someone to sand blast them and clear coat them. What do you guys think?

[violentveedub]

Don`t sand blast them, you`ll destroy the aluminum and spend 10x longer sanding it all out. I`d go with a chemical stripper, or have them professionally acid dipped.





The rest of your process sounds good though.

[Preachers Sheets]

Ok, I`ll just sand them. As of now they are raw billet. They are not bad, I just want them perfect.

[rkf76]

Don`t sand blast them, you`ll destroy the aluminum and spend 10x longer sanding it all out. I`d go with a chemical stripper, or have them professionally acid dipped.





The rest of your process sounds good though.

how will sandblasting destroy the aluminum? I used to sandblast aluminum parts all day when I used to rebuild high volume vacuum pumps used in the wafer fab industry with no problems. What would you say about bead blasting them?

[bad venge]

Are you SURE there is Clearcoat ....Many wheels have no clear ... All you do is multigrit wet sanding then polish with aluminum polish ...After that you could have them cleared if you like