Need advice on wheels. Please Help!

T

ToyGuy

New member
:wait Anyone with any advice on repairing/detailing the clearcoat
that is starting to lift in several places leaving white blotches/lines on clear coated aluminum wheels would be greatly appreciated. The wheels are stock wheels on a 96 Toyota 4-Runner and I am looking to atleast reduce the ugliness as I assume that getting them to look like new without totally stripping them is out of the question? If anyone knows of any info on the Net that discusses this I would also greatly appreciate the link. If stripping them is the only answer, I would appreciate any tips on the process even though I may not get involved in that. I assume the wheels go this way from brake dust and not being waxed enough.
Any help would be greatly appreciated as I am really stumped.
Thanks in advance for your help!
 
dont be afraid, strip it, and polish that aluminum as bright as chrome. I always felt clearcoating aluminum wheels were the factories answer to a lazy persons problem. clearcoating is nice for the people who arent into a clean car like 'we' are. I've seen some of this clearcoat remover on one of the sponsor's page here. Also i did this to a 1987 corvette and i remember this to be quite tedious and messy. there's gotta be hundreds of shops around that will refinish wheels and then you just have to maintain.cheers.
 
Stripping clear coat really isnt that hard. I just did it about 3 weeks ago on my aluminum Impala Wheels. I am not happy with how they look though. It's such a PITA to polish out aluminum. It's quite frustrating. I am going to sand mine down and paint them or purchase new wheels. Just wanted to tell you that before you go jumping into it.

If you do strip the wheels, you can just go to Pep boys and buy some aircraft stripper. Make sure you let that stuff sit on the wheels for the proper amount of time. I used Paint brushes to apply the product to the wheels. MAKE SURE YOU WEAR GLOVES. I wore latex ones, and some of that stuff got through, and it BURNS like an S.O.B. Also BE VERY CAREFUL when removing the product as it is PAINT STRIPPER and it will do just that. It'll also eat any piece of plastic trim that gets in it's way.

Another problem with aluminum wheels is that most of them have what is known as refraction grade. Basically, especially on my wheels, you can see all the lines and stuff where they were machined. You may want to consider a strip and repaint. I'm going to try painting them myself because I am pretty good with spray paint and Duplicolor makes a product that is for wheels and their website says it will stick to aluminum. We'll see.

My .02, take it for what it's worth. HTH

Edit: Read this thread prior to starting the project: http://www.impalasuperstore.com/nai...p?TOPIC_ID=20868&SearchTerms=Polishing,wheels
 
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