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Restoring Wheels & Flipping Faces


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I use Jasco personally. Not the enviromentally friendly shit either.
If you want to polish correctly, it takes a lot of elbow grease. You can make it easier and use half a tank of gas. Money:Time, your mileage may vary (literally).

If you ever expect to have a polished surface last for any length of time, it requires actually polishing. Your general hand sand and mother's rag will look okay for awhile. But where a mirror surface with nil imperfections is required, you're gonna spend time with buffing wheels. These lips on 68Datsun510's are three stage sanded, and three stage buffed and then sealed.

 

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But then again people say I go overboard.
>Bought $30 acryllic wheel sealant (not paint sealant, btw).

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i wouldn't use a wire wheel on my wheels, sounds way to harsh on aluminum. i could be wrong but id be hesitant to use that approach without seeing results in person first.

 

If you're going after a homemade polish like I did, you ARE going to scratch your wheels, but you go up with the sand paper to reduce the scratches until they're so fine you can polish the wheels, it won't look pretty initially but if you keep it up and like someone else said, use lots of elbow grease, you'll be happy with the end results.  I mean did you not see the end results of what my panasports came out looking?  Look back a page or two to see for yourself.

 

 

 

 

I used gasket remover.. it did NOTHING. Anywhere.

Did you used a pump style one or an aerosol gasket remover?  If you used the pump style one, that's worthless since it's mostly water and no chemicals.  The stuff I used bubbled up the powercoating as soon as it made contact. 

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Well I'm sure it doesn't have the same active chemicals than what I used.  Try to find the exact stuff, I'm going to try to have some from out of CA since I know CA has regulations to get rid of certain chemicals that are too strong...but for my needs, there's no such thing. :)

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If you're going after a homemade polish like I did, you ARE going to scratch your wheels, but you go up with the sand paper to reduce the scratches until they're so fine you can polish the wheels, it won't look pretty initially but if you keep it up and like someone else said, use lots of elbow grease, you'll be happy with the end results.  I mean did you not see the end results of what my panasports came out looking?  Look back a page or two to see for yourself.

 oh, i didn't realize you used it on your wheels, i guess i didn't see that you mentioned using it somewhere else.

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  • 2 weeks later...

$15? Ouch.. is that $15 shipped?

haha I think it was like $18 shipped. Freaking sucked going through all the holes on my meshies, I should have just gotten them sand blasted. I'm trying to figure out how to polish the lips now. I got them all smooth by sanding them but there are still some dark spots, anyone know if the dark spots will come out when I polish? Or should I re-sand them? 

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After you have everything sanded, if you're willing to go back over it with fine sand paper (the finest that you went, or higher) you can always acid wash them. That'll remove whatever oxidation you have left from before, and add a white frosty appearance of bare aluminum. After it is dry, you can then begin final sanding again and buffing, or polishing if you prefer. The acid will get into everywhere everything else didn't. If you leave it sit too long, or too high a concentration, then it'll begin to eat the surface. You'll then have to re-sand everything and destroy your prior work.

I use a 1:10 at the very, very strongest. Usually more like 1:30.
Depends on what acid you use, temperature, what you're using it on, etc. Water spots on windows? 1:100. Detailing with a steam cleaner? Like 1:50, all depends on what you're doing. Oh. And don't breath the fumes, they will off-gas pretty bad on dirty wheels.

 

Eagle One makes some Aluminum wheel cleaner that works decent enough, it's hardly as potent as the stuff I use (professional bulk), but this will work if you've cleaned the majority of everything up already. Use sparingly. Don't get on you, or anything else that is high polished, it will instantly etch it.

 

http://eagleone.com/mag-wheel-cleaner

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40 year old Western Cyclone 13"x5.5" wheel. It's pretty beat up and dull. No chemicals used. Just lots of elbow grease.

 

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Wow, after restoration it is too bright to use a flash. It blew out the picture. Same angle as the first picture.

 

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Different angle. Wheel leaning against the wall. Flash still blows out the picture.

 

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A good picture. About a 45 degree angle with no flash. I can't believe how bright the wheel turned out. Started with a file and 150 grit sandpaper. Followed by 220 grit sandpaper, then I soda blasted the whole thing. Front, back and inside for a like new starting point. Went on to 400, 800, 1000, and 1500 grit sandpaper. All done by hand with no blocks. My fingers hurt and lost some skin but the results were worth it. Followed up by 3 polishes with Flitz metal polish. I learned how to work aluminum years ago by dressing rock nicks out of polished aluminum aircraft propellers. Lots of masking work and trimming with an X-acto knife that took about an hour. Painted the unpolished area with high temp semi-gloss black and went over the whole thing with Dupli-Color wheel clear coat. These wheel are porous and the tires will go flat if they don't have a tube. Learned on the internet that if you paint the inside of the wheel it will seal up and not leak. I used the clear coat to paint the inside of the wheel. I will let you know if it works. Total labor time for one wheel was about 5 hours, but cost about $30.00 and have enough material to do another wheel. 4 as good as brand new wheels for $60.00 and 20 hours of labor. I am a multi-tasker. I can drink beer, watch football on TV, and restore a wheel all at the same time. It's the Ratsun way.

 

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  • 2 years later...

Bumping an old, dead thread.....

But it seems the question was never answered! CAN you flip faces on 2 / 3 pc wheels?

 

I recently purchased these old Hayashi Commands. They are 13x6 and 13x6.5. I wanted to go with 13s, but I couldn't seem to ever find really deep dished 13. SO, I had to settle for these:

 

IS it possible to flip the faces? I see the barrels do have a bevel on the correct side for proper orientation of the face, and it's somewhat of a tight fit if I reverse the face, but it appears to line up OK.

 

The first thing that comes to mind is the massive offset now, and the potentially horrendous wheel-poke. I don't like running fender flares, so that's not an option.

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