Hi mate...
I started by stripping the wheel of lacquer by using nitromoors paint stripper. This works brilliantly to get the clearcoat pretty much all off. I gave it a couple of good coats of stripper leaving the last one on for an hour, but dont let it dry as it can eat in and score the metal. I then used a soft wire brush attached to my new Makita electric drill which made very short work of the remaining corrosion and any last bits of lacquer etc.
The picture shows the tyre still on but at this point I popped the wheels I had down to my local fitter and had the tyres removed, I would recommend you do this before you start stripping etc though.
Once all of the loose corrosion is off its important to remove all of the lacquer I used a sanding disc on the drill with various grades of wet and dry. I managed to remove most of the original finish getting the wheels back mostly to bare metal. Dont worry about any last bits of silver paint the trick here though is to get the surface as smooth as you can. I paid special attention to the dings and scuffs on the rims from years of kerbing, the sanding disc on the drill and 400 grit wet dry removes most of them. I then filled the bad ones with some knifing putty.
I then gave the whole thing a final sand finishing off with wet 1200 grit paper... The whole process took about 3 hours but it was made tolerable by ice cold bottles of Becks
Then comes priming, I would recommend U-Pol hi-build primer its brilliant stuff and covers any slight imperfections on the wheel including the odd scar caused by over enthusiastic use of the wire brush!
I gave its 4 coats the finish is quite rough so it needs sanding between coats with 1200 grit. I would bother with the first 2 coats though but concentrate on getting the last coats of primer silky smooth!
Once done I left it overnight to dry and then gave it a good wash with hot water and washing up liquid. Then its simply a matter of giving it a top coat, I used the AutoGlym silver wheel paint, I bought from ebay. Its much cheaper than the Wurth stuff and provides a great silver finish that looks almost indentical to the original silver finish....
This is the stuff, get it off ebay for about a fiver a can I think....
I ended up using 3 tins to do all 4 wheels, but I did give each one about 4 coats. I ended up with some runs which were easily recitified by sanding between coats and then blowing over again with the paint.
Then its just a case of applying a clearcoat lacquer, I used the bog standard Halfords stuff giving it around 3 coats. Luckily it was a really hot day when I did mine to they dried really quickly. Once fully hardened (left mine on the lawn in the hot sun for a few days) I rubbed the whole thing down with TCut and then applied a coat of car wax....
Set of new Kumho's went on and they look as good as new! But remember to ask the tyre fitter man to put the balance weights on the inside of the rim as you dont want your hard word ruined by an ugly lead weight on your lovely shiny wheels!
Job done! and saved at least 300 quid which would a professional refurb would have cost..
:bannana:
