So after being really lazy and not swapping wheels/tires this past winter, winter took it's toll on my wheels. I made a thread with pictures of how they looked and a coupel cleaners I tried. I tried cleaners, polishes, powerball, things I shouldn't... Repeated washing since then have seeed to help but not enough. So finally I went out and tried some steel wool and metal polish and that seemed to do the trick. Though it left a dull, satin like finish that needed to be polished out. The I opted to remove the wheels for this because getting around the lug nuts was next to impossible. Keep in mind the lighting in our shop at work is absolutely terrible. We spend very little time there so it's not worth improving.

I'll start off with a few pictures of how they looked before I did anything.






Next step was to pick a polish to use in conjunction with the #0000 steel wool. Dedicated Metal Polishes on hand were the entire English Custom Metal Polishes lineup, Adams #1 and #2, and Optimum Metal Polish. After going through a few of them while initially trying to clean the wheels I found that English Custom Metal Polishes Metal Restorer had larger, visible chunks/abrasives and seemed to work the best at removing the worst stuff so I chose to use that with the steel wool. Here are 50/50 shots of what it looked like after the steel wool.




And a shot after the entire wheel was polished with steel wool and Metal Restorer.



Next step was to polish them to shine since the steel wool leaves light scratches causing a satin look. After trying different polishes I settled Optimum Metal Polish because it seemed to be finishing down finer than the others with the added benefit of it sealing as well. Some parts of the wheel required more than pass as the steel wool left heavier marks in some places. This will be evident in the 50/50 shot.

 

Now that you got the gist of it all here is a quick close up of the second wheel and an after shot of the same wheel. The after pic shows some imperfections yet. I'm not sure if you'll be able to see them in the resized image or not. At full size you can see them. There holes have some minor pitting that I'm not sure if I can fix or not. After looking at the pictures I also noticed that missed a few spots as far as wiping them down goes.




I stopped documenting after wheel one with just a few pictures of wheel 2. I started running out of time because I had to be somewhere so I had to concentrate on getting them done.

Also here is a picture of what it looks like during the steel wool step.




Back when I was experimenting with one of the wheels trying to get it clean I tried some different things. I mentioned that I also tried some things that I shouldn't have. One of them was Meg's Super Degreaser. I sprayed it on and agitated. Well it ran down the wheel and stained it or etched it. Most of it came out but the following picture shows that it has spots on it. They're a lot easier to see in person but the wheel still looks much better. I'm not quite sure if those are fixable.




I also did the barrel of the wheels. It was sort of an after thought so I wasn't concentrating too much on them. I just wanted to give them a real quick clean up while they were off. Just a quick 50/50 shot. The #0000 and Metal Restorer made prety light work of them. Half of the barrel took me less than 2 minutes to clean up, wipe off the residue and seal up with Opti Seal. Speaking of Opti Seal I should also note that I sealed everything up with Opti Seal as well.

 

Wow! Awesome work! Now swap the wheel weights to the inside for a cleaner look.

 

Thats the reason why I went with chrome. But sad to say I run mine in the winters too and there is just not much you can do unless you want to clean your wheels on a weekly basis.

I seen a guy on here try to pwedercoat his wheels clear to protect the polished aluminum. That may be an option worth checking out.

 

They called for too much weight for that to be practical. I didn't have much choice but to put the weights on the outside. One of the wheels has the weights on the inside but that's a lot. My buddy did it for me free of charge since he works in a tire shop for the last 8 or 9 years. I watched him do it and there just wasn't much he could do. He even tried unmounting and remounting, rotating the tire on the wheel a few times to try to lessen the amount of weight and no luck.

 

Did you try the ones that glue to the inside of the wheel behind the spokes?

The good thing about aluminum wheels is you can fix almost anything that happens to them. The bad is they are and will always be work to keep them nice as they are when they are freshly done.
Everything has a price.

Beautiful job...nice photos of before and after.
Have you ever tried Flitz?

 

Yes those re the weights I'm talking about that I have on one of my wheels. It was asking for too much weight that way.

 

Is there much difference between using steel wool on the rims and wet sanding? Last time i did a set that was pretty rough i wet sanded them down to like 2000 grit paper then just polished them up with a power ball

 

Looks great, big difference!

Good job!

 

Not sure on the wet sanding. Steel wool forms to the different curves better. I may try wet sanding on the one wheel that has the spots and see what happens. Some of the holes in the wheels aren't exactly where I'd like them to be yet. They have some very might pitting that I am going to try wet sanding out. I don't have to remove the wheels for that.

 

they look great man! you just used the steel wool alone on them first correct? i think im going to order some Optimum metal polish after seeing your pics! haha

 

Looks good.

 

I used the #0000 steel wool with another metal polish. The metal polish I used with the wool was English Custom Metal Polish - Metal Restorer. It has fairly large chunk of abrasives in it that I convinced myself would help to remove some of the imbedded contaminants and smooth out some of the pitting. I don't see any issues with using the Optimum Metal Polish with the steel wool though. The only thing that may make the process longeris that OMP seals the surface in the process which means when you come back without the steel wool to make them shine you're going to have to polish through the protection it left. I wouldn't worry too much about it though as I used multiple passes of OMP after the steel wool to get rid of all of the haze the steel wool left.

 

sweet! thanks. my wheels arent as bad as yours though so i dont have to worry right now. hahaha

 

Very nice I am going to have to do the same thing to some wheels I have. Where did you get the opti seal and how do you use it?