quick question, how do i polish the outter aluminum lip on my wheels ? the clear coat needs to be taken off and polished… tips?
Yeah the clear needs to be removed for sure. It depends on the situaition. If the entire wheel is cleared which i am sure it is. you can just mask off the rest of the wheel and use the aircraft remover spray paint remover stuff to eat off the clear coat and rinse it away… but it might get on the rest of the wheels paint too… so it isnt easy.
The other idea i have would mask off the wheel real well and carefully sand blast the clear off… but you would have to be very accurate becasue it would cut through the masking tape too if you shot the tape for more than a few seconds. The greasless compound on a wheel would also cut the clear coat off but again you have to mask it off with some good tape or be accurate with the wheel.
Or strip/media blast the entire wheel and polish the lips and then mask off the lips and repaint the spokes… that would give you the best results.
looks great!
Here is the worst wheel all finished. I couldnt go much deeper to file the small digs out anymore… I could tig some aluminum in to fill it, but I have yet to yoru that out and would rather test it out on a set of my wheels than a customers!
and here are both all done side by side.
Be wary in doing that good sir. you must pre heat a piece of aluminum that large to about 4-450degress for about 20-30 minutes before welding it, and then bring it down to cool slowly at a timed rate post weld. not doing do will make the lip very brittle and subject to failure under load.
Something we do day in day out repairing aluminum heads. shitty work but it’s the only way to do it properly unfortunately though.
Aside from that, the final wheels look REAL good compared to what they were at first sight in OP. Good work right there :thumbup
hey mike give me a call please ! i want to do a valve cover and my intake.
Great info, good thing I got that ratty old oven in the background down there! I will have to give it a shot on my old wheels and see how it goes!
Thanks for the :thumbup also buddy.
Will do man, I got your VM and will call you later tonight or tomorrow, I had a long weekend and have a ton of catching up casue I went out of town last week/weekend.