How To: Restore wheels at home...Sorta.
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Joined: Jan 2010
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From: Maryland.
How To: Restore wheels at home...Sorta.
- I CANNOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT YOU DO TO YOUR OWN WHEELS, NO EXCEPTIONS -
Well, a while back I contacted a company about a set of wheels I was interested in, had the money set aside for them and was waiting on a return eMail...well, the eMail never came and I forgot about them for a little while, then about two weeks ago I was contacted by the company that was clearing stock due to Yen/US inflation rates and the wheels were still available. About fell off my chair at work, very happy. I excitedly purchased the wheels two days later and have since been waiting for them to come in. Now that they've arrived I figured I'd give an in-depth look at repairing wheels to a good clean functional condition.
The wheels in question, AME Schrift 18x9.5 18x8.5 - Shipped from overseas packed in a container with other wheels, and curb rash. FUN!
The following is a step by step of a sort of process I've developed over the years for repairing damaged chrome wheels.
What you'll need for the job is pretty in-depth, hence the 10/10 Difficulty rating. You need access to a variety of tools and chemicals/compounds to do this...this of course is not a complete 100% must-follow process I merely did this with what I had already lying around as far as tools/supplies go.
In no particular order:
- High-Speed Rotary buffer 3,000 or above RPM capability is best.
- A good quality 90 Degree die-grinder with various pads
- A good quality random orbit sander with 400/600 grit.
- Various wheel brushes for small areas and scrubbing.
- 0000 Steel wool
- A good de-greaser (I used Spitfire, had it around)
- A very good car polish (I used Menzerna Intensive polish)
- Two buffing wheels and about 10 microfibers that you will destroy.
- Electrical tape (Explained later)
- Rags, Air compressor, Water/hose, a Comfortable chair and Beer.
- NEVER DULL (the best product for cleaning chrome ever, period)
Now, lets get started...first some close ups of what we're dealing with
http://www.poopftw.com/wheelrep/DSC05658.jpg <--- Due to photo constrains please click these next few to view.
http://www.poopftw.com/wheelrep/DSC05659.jpg
http://www.poopftw.com/wheelrep/DSC05660.jpg
http://www.poopftw.com/wheelrep/DSC05662.jpg
First things first, Degrease and scrub the back of the wheel. Get the dirty part over with...doesn't need to be perfect unless you want it to be.
http://www.poopftw.com/wheelrep/DSC05666.jpg
Grab the 90 Degree die-grinder and get to work, it takes being quite good with your hands/eyes/feel to get this right, so practice first. I'm a mechanic by trade so this all comes naturally to me. Get a feel for your tools, make sure you hold it comfortably in your hand and work SLOWLY, time you take here will be worth it in the end.
http://www.poopftw.com/wheelrep/DSC05669.jpg
Now some photos of various points in the process.
Step 1 - Smooth, get the big spots out.
Keep going...
And going... (I've covered the un-repaired lip here to give you an idea of what I did so far. This is about 5 minutes of work.
Now...that's the relatively easy part out of the way. Here comes fun time! Chrome. If you're not familiar with it chrome is a pain to work with because once you scratch it you'll never buff it out no matter how hard you try. The trick here is to somehow make a perfectly clean line that you can polish over between the GOOD chrome and the now ground-down aluminum of the wheel barrel. Here's where the Electrical tape comes into play - Please keep in mind this process is my own developed over trial and error over the years I CANNOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT YOU DO TO YOUR OWN WHEELS, NO EXCEPTIONS - Take your electrical tape and cleanly/evenly tape off a line around the edge of ALL of the areas you ground down leaving an exposed area of GOOD chrome between the repaired area and the tape. The tape is going to be your grind line.
Like so.
Now the fun part, you need to take your Random-Orbit sander with a 600 grit pad on it and grind the metal down through the chrome all along the tape line. You can use 400 then 600 if your areas are rougher than usual. This is VERY Tedious but over the years I've taken a nack to it, if done properly you can actually ride the tape line around the wheel leaving a perfect space for a near seamless final polish.
Here's a photo of what I'm on about.
You can see here faintly, a fine line of chrome between 600 grit sanding and the tape, this MUST be done cleanly for a good final look.
Once you've got that all taken care of and smoothed out as best as possible you need to go back over EVERYTHING you just did again, except this time you need to use some Polish with your now nearly smooth dirty 600 grit sanding pad, this will quickly prepare the surface for final polishing. It slings everywhere and turns the edge of the wheel black temporarily but it's nothing the Miracle of Never-Dull can't fix!
Smear it on...
Sand it down again.
Once you're all the way around the wheel and satisfied with the results you can remove the Electrical tape from the wheel. Note the nice clean line between old chrome and new ground aluminum. Key to this process.
Overall progress shot at this stage, 3/4 of the way through. I use 0000 steel wool when I'm done as a final step before the polish, Chrome is VERY hard so on a good quality chrome 0000 steel wool wont come close to scratching it.
Polishing, this isn't nearly as easy at it seems at first because of the CONSTANT need to apply more polish to your pads. You can get a good 4-5" of GOOD polishing before you need to re-load the pad with Polish. Again, as stated before I am using Menzerna Intensive Polish here (its for car paint) and an old ruined Lake-Country buffing pad(white) with my Dewalt Rotary polisher on 3,000 RPM.
Load it up
Polish away!
First pass, not bad. You can see now why the line is so important to a good final result.
Fast forward, Lip is now fully polished.
This is one of the damaged areas from before. Much better!
Now comes my favorite part because I get to use my favorite product. NEVER DULL! it's wadding polish that comes pre-packed in a can on some fabric with chemicals and junk in it and well...It's the best thing ever if you're working on chrome. No contest. Take a nice piece of your never dull and absolutely go to town on the wheels with it - Rub and rub and rub and get all the dirt you can out of the finish, the more time you spend here the better your end result will be. You should ONLY be wiping the Never Dull off with CLEAN/NEW microfibers. Remember, once you scratch chrome it's scratched forever.
Never Dull to the rescue!
It leaves a film and smells weird(I love the smell of it...) but it works!
Progress with Never Dull.
Drum roll please...Finished wheel! Yes, that REALLY is the same wheel we started with! Impressive what some time/tools and elbow grease will do to some wheels.
Also, it's nice to note that Never Dull should protect the bare Aluminum you exposed in doing this procedure so long as you apply it regularly(which I will do...)
One last time... Below is the Before shot to compare with above.
Hopefully this has been helpful to someone who may be interested in doing this themselves. All in all this cost me about $20(For some Never Dull and towels...had everything else at home) and 5hrs of my time for all four wheels. I'd be happy to answer any questions anyone may have or provide insight on how to go about this yourself. Remember, I do this for a living day in day out so this all comes natural to me and to make matters worse I never do write-ups so this is probably somewhat less inclusive than it could be but whatever. It gets the job done!
My final say personally is this - Obviously the wheels do not look perfect but they're at least 70% better than what they were and now appear completely flawless from 5-6 feet away. That's all that really matters to me. Wheels are wheels, they'll get damaged eventually and you'll be angry. Eventually some years from now I'll have these Re-Chromed, but right now they're in fantastic shape for the age/condition they arrived in.
Thanks very much for taking the time to look through this all!
-Froth
- I CANNOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT YOU DO TO YOUR OWN WHEELS, NO EXCEPTIONS -
Well, a while back I contacted a company about a set of wheels I was interested in, had the money set aside for them and was waiting on a return eMail...well, the eMail never came and I forgot about them for a little while, then about two weeks ago I was contacted by the company that was clearing stock due to Yen/US inflation rates and the wheels were still available. About fell off my chair at work, very happy. I excitedly purchased the wheels two days later and have since been waiting for them to come in. Now that they've arrived I figured I'd give an in-depth look at repairing wheels to a good clean functional condition.
The wheels in question, AME Schrift 18x9.5 18x8.5 - Shipped from overseas packed in a container with other wheels, and curb rash. FUN!
The following is a step by step of a sort of process I've developed over the years for repairing damaged chrome wheels.
What you'll need for the job is pretty in-depth, hence the 10/10 Difficulty rating. You need access to a variety of tools and chemicals/compounds to do this...this of course is not a complete 100% must-follow process I merely did this with what I had already lying around as far as tools/supplies go.
In no particular order:
- High-Speed Rotary buffer 3,000 or above RPM capability is best.
- A good quality 90 Degree die-grinder with various pads
- A good quality random orbit sander with 400/600 grit.
- Various wheel brushes for small areas and scrubbing.
- 0000 Steel wool
- A good de-greaser (I used Spitfire, had it around)
- A very good car polish (I used Menzerna Intensive polish)
- Two buffing wheels and about 10 microfibers that you will destroy.
- Electrical tape (Explained later)
- Rags, Air compressor, Water/hose, a Comfortable chair and Beer.
- NEVER DULL (the best product for cleaning chrome ever, period)
Now, lets get started...first some close ups of what we're dealing with
http://www.poopftw.com/wheelrep/DSC05658.jpg <--- Due to photo constrains please click these next few to view.
http://www.poopftw.com/wheelrep/DSC05659.jpg
http://www.poopftw.com/wheelrep/DSC05660.jpg
http://www.poopftw.com/wheelrep/DSC05662.jpg
First things first, Degrease and scrub the back of the wheel. Get the dirty part over with...doesn't need to be perfect unless you want it to be.
http://www.poopftw.com/wheelrep/DSC05666.jpg
Grab the 90 Degree die-grinder and get to work, it takes being quite good with your hands/eyes/feel to get this right, so practice first. I'm a mechanic by trade so this all comes naturally to me. Get a feel for your tools, make sure you hold it comfortably in your hand and work SLOWLY, time you take here will be worth it in the end.
http://www.poopftw.com/wheelrep/DSC05669.jpg
Now some photos of various points in the process.
Step 1 - Smooth, get the big spots out.
Keep going...
And going... (I've covered the un-repaired lip here to give you an idea of what I did so far. This is about 5 minutes of work.
Now...that's the relatively easy part out of the way. Here comes fun time! Chrome. If you're not familiar with it chrome is a pain to work with because once you scratch it you'll never buff it out no matter how hard you try. The trick here is to somehow make a perfectly clean line that you can polish over between the GOOD chrome and the now ground-down aluminum of the wheel barrel. Here's where the Electrical tape comes into play - Please keep in mind this process is my own developed over trial and error over the years I CANNOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT YOU DO TO YOUR OWN WHEELS, NO EXCEPTIONS - Take your electrical tape and cleanly/evenly tape off a line around the edge of ALL of the areas you ground down leaving an exposed area of GOOD chrome between the repaired area and the tape. The tape is going to be your grind line.
Like so.
Now the fun part, you need to take your Random-Orbit sander with a 600 grit pad on it and grind the metal down through the chrome all along the tape line. You can use 400 then 600 if your areas are rougher than usual. This is VERY Tedious but over the years I've taken a nack to it, if done properly you can actually ride the tape line around the wheel leaving a perfect space for a near seamless final polish.
Here's a photo of what I'm on about.
You can see here faintly, a fine line of chrome between 600 grit sanding and the tape, this MUST be done cleanly for a good final look.
Once you've got that all taken care of and smoothed out as best as possible you need to go back over EVERYTHING you just did again, except this time you need to use some Polish with your now nearly smooth dirty 600 grit sanding pad, this will quickly prepare the surface for final polishing. It slings everywhere and turns the edge of the wheel black temporarily but it's nothing the Miracle of Never-Dull can't fix!
Smear it on...
Sand it down again.
Once you're all the way around the wheel and satisfied with the results you can remove the Electrical tape from the wheel. Note the nice clean line between old chrome and new ground aluminum. Key to this process.
Overall progress shot at this stage, 3/4 of the way through. I use 0000 steel wool when I'm done as a final step before the polish, Chrome is VERY hard so on a good quality chrome 0000 steel wool wont come close to scratching it.
Polishing, this isn't nearly as easy at it seems at first because of the CONSTANT need to apply more polish to your pads. You can get a good 4-5" of GOOD polishing before you need to re-load the pad with Polish. Again, as stated before I am using Menzerna Intensive Polish here (its for car paint) and an old ruined Lake-Country buffing pad(white) with my Dewalt Rotary polisher on 3,000 RPM.
Load it up
Polish away!
First pass, not bad. You can see now why the line is so important to a good final result.
Fast forward, Lip is now fully polished.
This is one of the damaged areas from before. Much better!
Now comes my favorite part because I get to use my favorite product. NEVER DULL! it's wadding polish that comes pre-packed in a can on some fabric with chemicals and junk in it and well...It's the best thing ever if you're working on chrome. No contest. Take a nice piece of your never dull and absolutely go to town on the wheels with it - Rub and rub and rub and get all the dirt you can out of the finish, the more time you spend here the better your end result will be. You should ONLY be wiping the Never Dull off with CLEAN/NEW microfibers. Remember, once you scratch chrome it's scratched forever.
Never Dull to the rescue!
It leaves a film and smells weird(I love the smell of it...) but it works!
Progress with Never Dull.
Drum roll please...Finished wheel! Yes, that REALLY is the same wheel we started with! Impressive what some time/tools and elbow grease will do to some wheels.
Also, it's nice to note that Never Dull should protect the bare Aluminum you exposed in doing this procedure so long as you apply it regularly(which I will do...)
One last time... Below is the Before shot to compare with above.
Hopefully this has been helpful to someone who may be interested in doing this themselves. All in all this cost me about $20(For some Never Dull and towels...had everything else at home) and 5hrs of my time for all four wheels. I'd be happy to answer any questions anyone may have or provide insight on how to go about this yourself. Remember, I do this for a living day in day out so this all comes natural to me and to make matters worse I never do write-ups so this is probably somewhat less inclusive than it could be but whatever. It gets the job done!
My final say personally is this - Obviously the wheels do not look perfect but they're at least 70% better than what they were and now appear completely flawless from 5-6 feet away. That's all that really matters to me. Wheels are wheels, they'll get damaged eventually and you'll be angry. Eventually some years from now I'll have these Re-Chromed, but right now they're in fantastic shape for the age/condition they arrived in.
Thanks very much for taking the time to look through this all!
-Froth
- I CANNOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT YOU DO TO YOUR OWN WHEELS, NO EXCEPTIONS -
Thread Starter
Registered User
Joined: Jan 2010
Posts: 1,036
Likes: 1
From: Maryland.
Yeah, if there's enough meat on the lip of the rim to grind/blend it's a much better way to get a great look to grind it down and blend it. When a professional wheel restorer repairs the rim of a lip they generally use a giant lathe to machine the lip back to a point there is no curb marks and then go from there. Filling works for wheels you plan on painting to cover the fill material up but when it's a Chrome or Polished lip it generally does not work well.
-Froth
-Froth
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