- Thread starter
- #21
Sorry, gotta give me some time, I have been extremely busy....It is spring time, anyone and everyone that has a bike is pulling it out of the garage and is wanting it painted like now! For riding season. Soon though!
Polished wheels
- Thread starter madcardisease
- Start date
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BumpStill can't wait to find out really excited to have my wheels looking like the one in your post... all brand new and shiny..
What I've done in the passed when I used to polish motocycle wheels is
First, strip the clear coat off with some type of furniture paint stripper
Second, Start off with a DA use 180 grit paper till you get all the clearcoat left behind off the wheel. Then move to 220 grit, then to 400, 600, 800 and finally 1000 with the air powered DA. When you get this far your wheel is pretty close to polishing. Next pull out the 1000 grit wet and dry paper, sand by hand and sand in one direction only, cross sanding will cause scratches. Then move on to 1500 then to 2000 all with wet or dry paper. Note that motorcycle wheels have a rough texture to them so it took some elbow grease to sand them smooth. With these wheels you don't have to worry about sanding as much because they are pretty smooth to begin with.
Third, I would finish off with polishing rouge and a polishing rag wheel.
Fourth I would use some sort of a polish type sealer to protect the polished areas.
Sorry for the hijack!!!
First, strip the clear coat off with some type of furniture paint stripper
Second, Start off with a DA use 180 grit paper till you get all the clearcoat left behind off the wheel. Then move to 220 grit, then to 400, 600, 800 and finally 1000 with the air powered DA. When you get this far your wheel is pretty close to polishing. Next pull out the 1000 grit wet and dry paper, sand by hand and sand in one direction only, cross sanding will cause scratches. Then move on to 1500 then to 2000 all with wet or dry paper. Note that motorcycle wheels have a rough texture to them so it took some elbow grease to sand them smooth. With these wheels you don't have to worry about sanding as much because they are pretty smooth to begin with.
Third, I would finish off with polishing rouge and a polishing rag wheel.
Fourth I would use some sort of a polish type sealer to protect the polished areas.
Sorry for the hijack!!!
- Thread starter
- #25
Sanchez is exactly right! I started off with Aircraft stripper>
Brush this on in a light coat trying to go in one direction, let set for 15 min. or so, powerwash & repeat. After powerwashing for the second time, I used a Scotch Brite pad in the inserts where it is rough and knocked off any loose flakes of clear.
Next step was to clean the wheel up and mask it off for its coats of paint. I found some charcoal wheel paint that matched my bumpers really well. I found that if I masked and painted, then sanded and polished, it straightened out any lines that weren't perfect from masking. I used 3M 1/8" blue fine line tape to mask the outer edge, then covered all the rest of the unpainted surface with tape and paper.
Before I sprayed, I used wax and grease remover and blew it off really well. The first coat to go on was a metal etch primer. Don't put this on heavy just needs an even light coat. After that dried for 10-15 I was ready for coats of wheel paint. I ended up with about 4 good even coats, it dries pretty fast and seems to hold up well.
After about 30 Min. I unmasked and started to sand. I used a Dual action sander (DA) and put it into a locked mode used more for grinding. I started with a 400 grit paper to sand down the factory mill grooves, and stepped it up from there with 500, 600, 800 to 1200 all dry. You will burn alot of 1200 being such a low grit, and by this point it is basically beginning to polish. After the 1200 I used a 3000 grit pad and wet sanded in a directional pattern, you will notice this start to dull the wheel again, but it will really refine any scratches you have left.
Next was to dry off the wheel and clean it up. As for polishing, I used an wheel polishing kit made by Astro Pnumatics with a white wool ball that came with it. Instead of using a rouge I played with everything, and found that mothers aluminum polish by itself w/ the air polisher did the best. I went around the wheel once really well this way, and insted of hand buffing the residue off, I just powerwashed it and went around it one more time. Power wash again and blow off. The next step was to use a 3" air buffer with a black foam pad and the mothers again. This seemed to give it a nice final polish, and remove some of the swirls from the polisher. After thats said and done I moved on to the ZoopSeal process. ZoopSeal wants you to get the wheel polished to where you like it before you begin with thier process. Just follow the directions provided. The one thing I did find with this product, is that when you put on the clear liquid sealer to let dry, this will take forever! I had to wait about 24 hrs before doing the final step of buffing. All said and done the ZoopSeal made the polished parts extremely slick with a protective coating. It didn't milk out or give a rainbow effect, so I was very impressed. They say the product should protect a bare aluminum for up to 2yrs. Guess we'll see.
I took all my wheel weights off to do this, so the next step is a balancing and done. This process has taken me about 2 1/2 - 3 hrs per wheel. That is doing them one at a time when I could get to it. Doing all 4 at the same time would probably cut down on your time quite a bit. If anyone has any additions, or other tips that would help.....Post 'em up!
Brush this on in a light coat trying to go in one direction, let set for 15 min. or so, powerwash & repeat. After powerwashing for the second time, I used a Scotch Brite pad in the inserts where it is rough and knocked off any loose flakes of clear.
Next step was to clean the wheel up and mask it off for its coats of paint. I found some charcoal wheel paint that matched my bumpers really well. I found that if I masked and painted, then sanded and polished, it straightened out any lines that weren't perfect from masking. I used 3M 1/8" blue fine line tape to mask the outer edge, then covered all the rest of the unpainted surface with tape and paper.
Before I sprayed, I used wax and grease remover and blew it off really well. The first coat to go on was a metal etch primer. Don't put this on heavy just needs an even light coat. After that dried for 10-15 I was ready for coats of wheel paint. I ended up with about 4 good even coats, it dries pretty fast and seems to hold up well.
After about 30 Min. I unmasked and started to sand. I used a Dual action sander (DA) and put it into a locked mode used more for grinding. I started with a 400 grit paper to sand down the factory mill grooves, and stepped it up from there with 500, 600, 800 to 1200 all dry. You will burn alot of 1200 being such a low grit, and by this point it is basically beginning to polish. After the 1200 I used a 3000 grit pad and wet sanded in a directional pattern, you will notice this start to dull the wheel again, but it will really refine any scratches you have left.
Next was to dry off the wheel and clean it up. As for polishing, I used an wheel polishing kit made by Astro Pnumatics with a white wool ball that came with it. Instead of using a rouge I played with everything, and found that mothers aluminum polish by itself w/ the air polisher did the best. I went around the wheel once really well this way, and insted of hand buffing the residue off, I just powerwashed it and went around it one more time. Power wash again and blow off. The next step was to use a 3" air buffer with a black foam pad and the mothers again. This seemed to give it a nice final polish, and remove some of the swirls from the polisher. After thats said and done I moved on to the ZoopSeal process. ZoopSeal wants you to get the wheel polished to where you like it before you begin with thier process. Just follow the directions provided. The one thing I did find with this product, is that when you put on the clear liquid sealer to let dry, this will take forever! I had to wait about 24 hrs before doing the final step of buffing. All said and done the ZoopSeal made the polished parts extremely slick with a protective coating. It didn't milk out or give a rainbow effect, so I was very impressed. They say the product should protect a bare aluminum for up to 2yrs. Guess we'll see.
I took all my wheel weights off to do this, so the next step is a balancing and done. This process has taken me about 2 1/2 - 3 hrs per wheel. That is doing them one at a time when I could get to it. Doing all 4 at the same time would probably cut down on your time quite a bit. If anyone has any additions, or other tips that would help.....Post 'em up!
- Thread starter
- #26
That's my spare in the first pictures......not too good for a spare i guess!Nice tire
Mass Production
In mass production of aluminum wheels, the color that goes in the "window" is painted on most of the face, and then the entire wheel is simply turned down to the final shape/finish, prior to getting the clear coat painted on. I would imagine the same could have been done here, so long as reasonable masking were done to the painted windows as the turning "grooves" were "erased."
Pretty nice job.
It'll be interesting to see not only if the clear lasts two years, but how it holds up to the wheel weights being installed.
In mass production of aluminum wheels, the color that goes in the "window" is painted on most of the face, and then the entire wheel is simply turned down to the final shape/finish, prior to getting the clear coat painted on. I would imagine the same could have been done here, so long as reasonable masking were done to the painted windows as the turning "grooves" were "erased."
Pretty nice job.
It'll be interesting to see not only if the clear lasts two years, but how it holds up to the wheel weights being installed.
Wow I had a feeling that would be allot of work! I wonder how my wheels would look if I just stripped off the old clear coat, polished and recoated?