Alloy wheel tidying up and mild refurbishment

Started 27th September 2017 at 16:17 · Laurence Jones

📷 No photo added

Hi,

I’m wondering if anyone here has tackled this task themselves ?

I’ve a set of Starfish wheels that are not pitted or got particularly scratched but could do with sprucing up. I’m thinking that they’d look much better if I could remove the laquer top layer and then relaqure them.

I’m also thinking that I could paint in the dark colour contrast sections on all of them, as these are just plain silver at the moment.

Any help and suggestions/experience would be good to hear – please.

Laurence

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- 18th November 2017 at 16:48 #9478
  
  David Wardale
  Participant
  
  Hello Laurence,
  I am exploring your site, and discovered this question, and thought I would respond. I wasn’t impressed with my starfish painted wheels, either, and, starting with the spare, succeeded in sanding off all the dull grey/silver paint. I started with a coarse grade of sandpaper, and worked my way to finer and finer grades, ending up at 2000 grit.Application of scratch-remover followed, and finally – polish. Rather like finishing a car body after paint work! The result is I now have a full set of polished aluminum (aluminium) wheels, that look really nice. Each wheel took around six hours of work. If I knew how to (easily) submit a photo, I would!
- 19th November 2017 at 13:47 #9499
  
  Laurence Jones
  Keymaster
  
  Hello David @robertdavidwardale
  
  I’ve made a start on refurbishing the paintwork on my wheels but haven’t make great progress yet. I’ve had a couple of sessions with NitroMors and that’s taken the majority of the paint off, but there is still loads left in the difficult places. I was thinking of using a little wire brush attachment on an electric drill but that’s as far as I’ve got.
  
  If you’re having problems loading photos up, please just email them to me and I’ll add them to your Photo Album for you (and post them into a Topic/Reply if you would like them). membership@xjs-soft-tops.com I am in discussions with the developer of the Photo Album software I use on the site, to create a single “Add Photo” button that facilitates the upload into the Photo Album and the placement into the Discussion Topic/Reply. Progress is unfortunately slow.
  
  Laurence
- 20th November 2017 at 22:36 #9590
  
  David Wardale
  Participant
  
  Here is the photo of my wheel Laurence
- 30th November 2017 at 13:34 #9818
  
  Laurence Jones
  Keymaster
  
  I’d be happy if I could get mine to looking that good as a result of my own efforts 🙂
  
  Laurence
- 1st December 2017 at 10:48 #9848
  
  David Wardale
  Participant
  
  You will! Just don’t get too aggressive with your choice of the coarser grades of sandpaper.Any scratches that you create will have to be removed eventually! I suppose Nitromors is a paint remover? Not familiar with the name. As an aside, the winters in western Pennsylvania are severe enough that my car hibernates for several months- long enough to spend time on projects like this! The wind sweeps down from Canada, crosses Lake Erie, picking up moisture as it does, and then deposits that moisture in the form of snow in my general area. Local weather forecasters call it “The Snow Belt.”
  Dave.
- 4th December 2017 at 23:40 #9966
  
  Mark Thorley
  Participant
  
  Nice job on your Starfish Alloys David, 6 hours per wheel is good time well spent:-)
- 5th December 2017 at 00:29 #9970
  
  David Wardale
  Participant
  
  Thank you, Mark! I suppose being retired does have SOME advantages!
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