Wheel polishing guide

Just thought I'd put up a quick guide on alloy wheel polishing for people who are thinking of doing the same.

I've never done anything like this before except for the time I tried to do some ally polishing back at school. Anyway I bought some second hand BBS LM's off a good chap off this forum. The wheels themselves were pretty much undamaged, with only a few small marks around the edge. The reason I polished them was because there was a substantial amount of salt corrosion on the polished/diamond cut lip. Photo attached will show what they were like, the rears were quite a bit worse than the fronts.

Firstly I browsed the web for a polishing mop. After looking at few sites I purchased a 'Non Ferrous metal polishing kit' from Tooledup.com. This included a stitched buff and polishing compound for initial polishing and a unstitched buff and glossing compound for a nice shiney finish. I will say however that I found the unstitched buff a little useless for my application as you couldn't put enough pressure on the surface to achieve anything, so I suggest that a single stitched buff is more than adequate. While I was on the site I also looked to purchase some wet and dry paper of various grades but found that it was quite expensive and in packs more than I required.

The wet and dry paper I bought from Halfords. I got a pack of each of the following grades, 240, 400, 800 and 1200, these came in packs of four sheets which was more than enough to do the job. Time for the hard work...

ohhh I have been wanting to do the wheels I have on.

I unfortunately decided to do this during mid winter when it was staying below freezing most of the day, so wrapped up warm (long johns included ) I ventured outside with a warm bucket of water to 1: to keep the wet and dry paper unclogged and 2: to stop my hands from getting frostbite.

Starting off I used pieces of 240 grit 'wet and dry' paper about 2 inches square working my way around the rim using longish strokes and going along the grain of the diamond cut rim to remove the laquer and corrosion, constantly dipping the bit of paper in the water to keep clean and occasionally hosing down the wheel to remove build up.

This I found was the most painstaking part, making sure I got rid of all the laquer. Once this was done the corrosions spots were easily rubbed away. At first I was being quite thrifty with the pieces of paper making sure I rubbed away until there was no sign of abrasiveness left but later I realised that I'd rather get the job done quicker and use more paper than spend more time outside than I really had to.

A problem I encountered along the way was that the wheels were split rims so some of the corrosion was behind where the 2 pieces of wheel bolt together. I did contemplate breaking down the rims but decided that it would probably be more hastle than it's worth. So with this in mind I only rubbed down as close as I could get to the inside of the wheel that I knew I could get the polishing buff to.

With the 240 paper finished with I moved onto the 400 grit, using the same principle as before, keeping the wheel and paper clean of build up but I found that if I stood the wheel up I could rub the rim down whilst rolling it slowly to work my way around it. This helped quite a bit but I did look daft walking backwards around the garden whilst sanding down a wheel.

Again once the wheel had been thoroughly rubbed down with the 400 grit paper to ensure that any deeper marks made by the coarse 240 grit were removed. I did the same with 800 grit and then 1200. It's recommended that you don't jump more than 2 grades of paper at a time, e.g going from 240 to 800 or 400 to 1200. This can seem long winded but it's best to work your way up the grades for a better finish. Finally the 'sanding' down was done, leaving a very smooth satin finish.

After cleaning the wheels thoroughly after the rubbing down I dried them down and began preparations for the polishing. Like I said before I've never done anything like this before so I was quite hesitant. I went outside again with prepped wheel, drill and stitched polishing buff (dont forget the eye protection either).

Once the buff was properly attached to the drill I 'span' it up and applied some of the first stage polishing compound (looks like a red bar of soap). I then held my breath and started on the wheel. Surprisingly I noticed immediate results, the rim going from a satin finish to a gloss. I continued working around the rim for a while but found a black residue left by the polishing compound was stopping me from seeing how well I was doing (maybe I was doing something wrong like using too much compound?) so I whipped out a tube of autoglym metal polish to remove it.

Once off I could see that the wheel did indeed have a glossy finish but could tell that more work was required to get it to the standard I wanted. So I set off again using the same compound and buff. After a couple more times of polishing with the buff and autoglym I thought I'd try my hand with the 'glossing' compound and unstitched buff. This didn't fair to well, as firstly I found it quite difficult to apply the compound to the buff, secondly it wasn't doing much to the finish of the wheel as I could not apply enough pressure because of it flopping around a lot (don't laugh ). Another bad point of the unstitched buff was that it constantly flung strands of cotton around everywhere which also showed it breaking down quite quickly.

So I thought I'd give the 'glossing' compound with the stitched buff a go instead. Firstly I turned the stitched buff around on the spindle and gave it a clean by spinning it up over some cardboard removing some of the build of dirt and compound. Once that was done I applied the 'glossing' compound and went for a spin. This didn't show immediate results but with a little effort the wheel came up lovely, again using the autoglym metal polish to clean them up. I was thinking about laquering them again but thought that 1: I'd bodge it up and make them look crap and 2: It will be a lot easier to clean smaller sections next time than having to do the whole lot. The downside though is that they're more exposed to the elements meaning I've gotta keep on top of cleaning them during the winter months to avoid corrosion from the salt.

And that's pretty much it. Attached are some photo's of after. I'll have to put some new pics up with them fitted to my car too.

looks good, well done

yer mate looks well good ! well done ! - just give them a coat of clear to keep out the salt

well done neil,

now try and make subboxes in the cold, thats worse, lol

glad to see they have come up so bling, u got ureself a cracking deal on them

Nice one

Very impressive!! What took longer, the polishing or the write up?

H.

Superb write up there, thanks! Mind if we nick it for the FAQ section?

I've got a set of wheels where the polished lips needs refurbing. Will give your method a try in the next few weeks.

Also, have you considered using something like Zoopseal to help keep the corrosion away?

Ill have a similar write up (though less wordy) soon

whats that?

heres the pics.... go figure..............

lol

whats that?

 

heres the pics.... go figure..............

 

lol

I was thinkin of less wordy than that in fact

Started seperate thread...

Very impressive!! What took longer, the polishing or the write up?

 

H.

lol, yeah I started the write up thinking 'it wont take too long'...

an hour later!

truth be known I think I spent about 3 hours on each wheel!!!

Superb write up there, thanks! Mind if we nick it for the FAQ section?

Not a problem, by all means.

What's zoopseal? Not heard of that before but it sounds like a good idea.

Nice write up Nelly. I don't quite get it though so if you want to come round and show me on 3 or 4 wheels then that would be helpful

Good write up, thats one less thing for me to do.

Personally that kit is not ideal for your application, i think you could get even better results with the right kit.

If its going black you are using way too much compound, little and often is the key !

Clean the surface between each mop and compound combo with Lime powder.

Never mix compounds on the same mop either.

Never mix compounds on the same mop either.

Kinda figured it wasn't ideal but...

Out of curiosity have you found a more suitable kit?

Kinda figured it wasn't ideal but...

 

Out of curiosity have you found a more suitable kit?

No kits as such just different mops and compounds would work better than the ones listed on that site you used.

Sisal mop - tripoli compound

colour mop - sovereign green compound

Calico G mop - with Blue compound.

+ a bag of lime powder.