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Polishing these nuts, BBS RS center nuts that is....

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    Polishing these nuts, BBS RS center nuts that is....

    Going through the process of putting a high polish on the center knock off nuts for my set of BBS RS001's. Here is the process I have used to do this.

    First off I used a aircraft stripper to remove the clear from the center nuts and the wrinkle finish from the large flat sides. (There is no pictures for this step so use your imagination). Just wear gloves & eye protection and read the directions carefully on the label of the product you bought. I used mar-hyde Tal- Strip II aircraft coating remover from a aerosol can and a hard plastic puddy knife/scrapper. This product can be picked up at any local auto parts store (ie. Autozone, Advanced Auto Parts, O'Reilly, etc etc...)

    Below image taken after aircraft stripper stage.



    I then started off with a 150 grit paper to to take them down to good metal. I then followed that up with using a 300 grit then to a 600 grit followed by a 1000 grit with water. I used the wet/dry paper on all grits used as well. I used a single direction motion throughout all stages of the sanding while progressively making the sanding marks finer and finer as I worked my way to the 1000 grit paper.

    Below image taken after the sanding process (all stages through 1000 grit)



    After getting them to the smoothness I wanted I then polished them out with Mothers Incredible Billet metal polish. Everything was done by hand (from sanding to the polishing).

    Below images taken after the polishing







    In the last image you can still see some sanding marks that honestly you can not see from 2 feet away. If you wanted to take them further down, then after the 1000 grit goto a 1500 grit following up with a 2000 grit all with wet/dry paper and using water. But like I said what is visable in that image can not be seen from 2 feet away, so I am not really worried about it.




    enjoy...


    #2
    Ugh. That is like a whole day's worth of work. Great job!

    Originally posted by whysimon
    WTF is hello Kitty (I'm 28 with no kids and I don't have cable)

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      #3
      Just did the same thing last week...looks great!
      1993 325ic Schwarz/Natur
      1991 318is Black/Black - Slicktop - Project s52
      1989 Alpine White/Black M3 S52
      1988 Henna/Pearl M3 <3

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        #4
        Great job--I know how much work that is by hand.

        Question--Do you use any type of wheel wax to protect the new surface? Just got my Ronal LS's mounted up yesterday and want to keep 'em looking new, but not sure if any of those wheel treatments are really worth a damn or not.

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          #5
          Originally posted by TrentW View Post
          Great job--I know how much work that is by hand.

          Question--Do you use any type of wheel wax to protect the new surface? Just got my Ronal LS's mounted up yesterday and want to keep 'em looking new, but not sure if any of those wheel treatments are really worth a damn or not.

          I have not used any on these BBS RS001's since they are still boxed up, but on my truck and denali, I do keep them waxed regularly...

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            #6
            What wheel wax do you use?

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              #7
              I tried some wheel wax that a friend had and IMHO it did NO different than the different car waxes I have used.

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                #8
                That's what I thought--good wax is good wax and not dependant on the surface you're trying to protect. I think I'll just use my Zymol car wax on my wheels.

                Are you going to clear coat your polished wheels now? If so, what would you use? Just curious as to the best way to spray that on and what to use...

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                  #9
                  No clearcoat will be used...

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                    #10
                    did you do this by hand? because i made that mistake on my first set of rs's. Just do it with a hand sander. takes like 20 min a piece. but that was also a mistake

                    no sand paper used for my third set :)

                    thread jackinggg


                    buffing wheel > all

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                      #11
                      Originally posted by rafiki View Post
                      did you do this by hand? because i made that mistake on my first set of rs's. Just do it with a hand sander. takes like 20 min a piece. but that was also a mistake

                      no sand paper used for my third set :)

                      thread jackinggg


                      buffing wheel > all

                      Nice! I am doing the center nuts by hand. I tried the hand DA sander on one side and it seemed harder to get the sanding marks out of it since they were in random directions.

                      Why do you say using the hand sander was also a mistake?

                      What did you do on your 3rd set?

                      I had the wheels refinished professionally. I have new chrome bolts / new emblems on order and on the way as well...

                      Before:




                      After:






                      :drink:

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                        #12
                        i wet sanded by rs lips up to 1500 grit and then hit it with a buffing wheel using a hard polishing compound first and then wenol metal polish. Using the wheel makes an unbelievable difference when you compare my hand polished borbet lips to the rs lips.

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