Simons guide to polishing your wheels.

[Gaz]

Simons guide to polishing your wheels.

Things you will need:

• A rim to be polished with no tyre on it.
  Sand paper ranging from P40 to P2000. The more variations you can get in between the better (You cant jump from 40 to 2000 etc)
  The P40 paper is only really necessary if you are removing paint or stone ships or deep scratches.
  Autosol.
  Gardening gloves.
  A car. Preferably auto and rwd and one you don't care too much for.
  Clean rags.
  Lost of time.
  Tennis ball.

Read this whole article before starting so you know what you are doing and what you will need. No point starting if you don't have all the right things on hand because it wont work.

Jack up one driving wheel and leave the other on the ground. Obviously this wheel is the one you will use. Use an axle stand preferably. And yuh, if you have a lokdif or LSD you can see this aint going to work.

Pretty much just go hard with the P40. Try to move the paper back and forth a bit. This helps the paper cut, stops it clogging and prevents the scratches from the paper going too deep. Be sure to get round the lip. For some of you it wont matter but with my stretch you can see the very back of the lip when the tyre is on.

When the majority of the paint is off i used the P80 emry tape.

Probably about 70% of the whole process was with this. The P40 is too harsh where as the P80 is just right to get the pitting out. Also its a tape which makes it easy to use.

I wrapped it around a tennis ball. If you do it right you only need to apply a downwards pressure on the ball. Much easier that trying to do it with just your hand. You can also use the tennis ball for the other paper grades.

Here you can see the pitting in the alloy. If you want it mirror spec shine these have to come out using the P80 paper.

Don't fool yourself into thinking "Oh ill get them out on the next paper grade".

They don't come out on the next paper grade...

After a lot of sanding with P80 you can see here how much material I had to take off to get the pitting out.

I'm now ready to move onto the next grade of paper which was P120.

Notice in this picture how I have sanded a stripe against the wheel rotation direction with the P80 paper.

I have done this down past the perpendicular scratches. This acts like a guide on how far I have to sand in the next grade to be sure of removing all the previous papers scratches. Be sure to cover the whole width of the wheel with an even depth. Don't do it in the same place every time.

Keep sanding with P120 until you can no longer see a single perpendicular scratch. Now you can re do the perpendicular guide mark with the P120 paper.

Repeat this process until you have got right up to your final grade of paper.

This will take you a long long time.

I went 40, 80, 120, 150, 220, 320, 400, 600, 800, 1000, 2000 grit.

I started using water as lube when the paper no longer cleared its self properly. This was at 800 grit and above. Try to do as much of it dry as you can.

After you have given it a good hoon on 2000 grit, stop moving the paper back and forward and try to get a nice scratch pattern that goes slowly from the inside to the outside of the rim. Like a lathe finish. This just helps the polish to look good.

Now your ready for polish.

You need three rags, one for applying the polish, one for taking the polish off and one for final polishing.

I put a brick on the accelerator to increase the wheel speed for polishing. Don't be silly about it. Shine is not necessarily proportional to wheel speed.

Apply the polish, give it a good burn with the polish to let it cut the 2000 grade scratches out.

I then cleaned off the polish and did it again. You will use most of the tube if your polishing substantial dish.

After cleaning the polish off for the second time I just used a perfectly clean soft rag with nothing on it.

This gets the small scratches out from the polish.

I have yet to see how long the shine will last. Im thinking I will just go over it every now and then with some more autosol. If its hard to keep mint though I may get a clear coat put over them. That way all it would take would be a rag to bring them back up to mint.

Now you can bring all the girls to the yard with your milkshake / bling wheels.

Simon