My wheel refinishing thread

[acolella76]

I am refinishing a set of BBS (idk what they are... ). 15x6.5 et40 I will be running 20 or 25mm spacers.


(ignore the rake, i just lowered it off the jackstands)

The paint job was pretty bad. Chipping in a lot of places, gold showing through, lots of corrosion. Not really sure what color I'm going to go with, so if you have any ideas post up! I know for sure I am going with a polished lip.

The chipping and corrosion:




Tires removed, commenced stripping





While I'm waiting for that, I popped off the caps to work on them a little. The PO Painted the wheels with the caps on, so they have some overspray on them. A light sand of 1500grit and a polish is taking care of that rather smoothly :)



I hope to get done with the stripping tonight and move on to priming and polishing tomorrow. I still gotta clean the other 3 wheels, they got dirty just sitting in the garage. Thanks for looking, post up any color suggestions please!

[e30trooper]

looking forward to see after effect pic's

[CabrioPunk]

What are you using to strip? Naval jelly>

[acolella76]

What are you using to strip? Naval jelly>

nope, paint stripper

[CabrioPunk]

All the info you can please. I am trying to locate a set of wheels to refinish.

These were already true, straight? Curbage?

Please do not paint black. Your car seems pretty straightforward... say standard silver color.

Rattle can paint job?

[acolella76]

All the info you can please. I am trying to locate a set of wheels to refinish.

These were already true, straight? Curbage?

Please do not paint black. Your car seems pretty straightforward... say standard silver color.

Rattle can paint job?

It is a heavy duty paint stripper. You can pick it up at Home Depot. I will be more detailed from now on.

These wheels were straight, yes. Some minor curb rash though. Not really sure what im going to do about that.

Black will not happen, i will either go with a shade of gold or silver

[acolella76]

Mini-update #1
Still haven't found out what kind of BBS these are...


Finished the caps! Like I said I used 1500grit sand paper, then stepped it up to 2000, then finished em off with a good polish.



Slowly but surely I am making progress... apparently this stuff doesn't work so well in the cold, and since it's 30 degrees outside it's taking longer than expected. I'm going to see what happens if i heat the wheel with a heat gun before applying the stripper. I will report back.

[blueapplesoda]

If you have a compressor you should get a media blaster to clean out all the nooks and crannies quickly and easily. get a bag of ground walnut shells for light paint stripping or for more cutting power clean sand (that has been sifted through a window screen/mesh element), harbor freight media blaster and hopper, and that funny looking hazmat media blasting hood and go to town on those wheels. Give it 20 mins per wheel and a 2 pounds of media and u should be good to go.

A plus is this stuff doesn't cost much and it works for a shit load of other things when it comes to cleaning. Only problem is it just makes a fuckin massive mess, so do it outside poor man style, hence natural/enviro friendly blast medias (no toxic Al Oxide or stuff like that). I have a blast cabinet, but that requires a bit more monies.

stripping paint manually is to labor intensive for me....

[acolella76]

I will try that. This is taking forever but I would rather spend an extra day than an extra $60

[acolella76]

Update:
These have been pretty much forgotten about, I have lots of other things keeping me pretty busy so I never have time to get working on these.

I've got them stripped for the most part. Not down to bare metal, but its down to the original factory powdercoat which will be just fine. So, while I wait for the paint stripper to do its thing on the last wheel, I started sanding the lips of the other wheels.



There were a few problem areas that easily cleaned up with some 250 grit sand paper.

From this:


To this:


Oh, and the wheels will be wrapped in these


Toyo Proxes R888 205/50/R15

That's all for now! I will hopefully be closed to done with the prep and polishing by this weekend.

[jeffSDguy]

Keep going, and going and going until you get those shoes clean.

[acolella76]

Beautiful day outside so I decided to polish the lips on one of the wheels.

After 600 grit wet sand:


After the final 1500 grit wet sand:


The goods:


And, the end result:



1 down, 3 to go! Then paint time!

[CabrioPunk]

I cant see the last picture. But why polish lips with centers that need painted still? Looks good. Nice looking wheel style.

[N2MYE30]

Nice work. I just refinished my set of wheels with great reward. I like the gold centers. :up:

[acolella76]

I cant see the last picture. But why polish lips with centers that need painted still? Looks good. Nice looking wheel style.

Because it is easier to tape off the lips when I paint than it would be to try to sand precisely on the line between the center and lip.

Nice work. I just refinished my set of wheels with great reward. I like the gold centers. :up:

Thanks! They're probably going to stay gold if I can find the right shade. No one has Wurth gold!!