ive started to strip/sand repeat. on my factory berlinetta rims, the z28 rims i have on my car now were easy to do and i managed to strip, sand, paint, and clearcoat all 4 of those ones in a few nights. its been a few nights and im still on the first berlinetta rim. it just has too many spokes and little spots that are textured and hard to get at.
was wondering if there was a stronger paint remover than the smelly gel stuff im using now. i dont want to pay 100$ a rim to have them refinished.

ive just been coating it in paint remover and going at it with a wire brush and sand paper when the paint bubbles.
what can i use on the aluminum to get the stains out of the places that are supposed to be polished?

ill have to go to the auto paint place to get some exact match rim paint for the original colour.

 

ok ill post pics then


heres car with original rims painted gold


heres one rim almost stripped down. took me about 2-3 hours of work scrubbing off the old paint and painting on the stripper gel.
looks alot worse than pics show


without flash

unstripped one in front
http://images.cardomain.com/member_i...50_26_full.jpg


heres what they should look like






so is there anything i can use to make stripping the paint easier?
and what should i use to take the stains out of the aluminum thats supposed to be polished. should i sand that area?

 

Try to find something that will take off the big white-walls on your tires too. Have you thought about sand blasting them? Can't be too expensive, and should work good.

 

I did my five spoke stock aluminum Z-28 rims. I only did the outer polished part of the rim and the polished highlights that go to the center.
I used one of those little (@2"dia.+/-) 3M grinding/polishing circular pads you can get to adapt for a power drill to remove the clear coat and any corrosion. After that I put an old cotton sports sock over top the grinder bit, tied it off with twist tie, cut the sock to fit and dipped it in aluminum polish. I polished those rims until I stopped getting any black/grey residue. I spent forever on each rim.
My rims were pretty screwed to begin with, and I had about a tenth of the surface you have to do. The end result still had small scratches in it that you could only see if you bent over and looked really close. Someone annal would have flipped out, but, my end result was much better than what I started with because of the pits.
Aluminum is pretty soft.
If you are going to try what I did do a test area on the back or out of the way.
I also have the same rims you do, but they are pitted deeper. Keep us updated.

 

used an sos pad and some orage clean, scrubbed the one rim for like an hour while the second one soaked in paint stripper

its getting there -im thinking of getting 2 rims professionally done and putting them on the drivers side, and the ones i did on the passenger side. noone will know, and ill get to enjoy the nicer ones.

 

sigh

got some black majic rim polish, and got out my dremel with the buffing pad, it seemed to do nothing, but the paste did turn gray. maybe i need to sand more. i got 400 grit and 1000 grit. the spokes are so small its hard to do

 

I also used rubbing compound with the sock/3M drill adapter.

Make sure the polish is specific to aluminum. I used crome polish at first and it did not do anything.

You should really be able to see the difference with the aluminum polish right away. The stuff foams up and the cotton will turn colour (black or grey) right away. It takes tonnes of time and you have to do it by hand for the last part.

I think I used "mothers" name brand stuff.

 

now you polished it right on the bare aluminum and not the clearcoat right?

this is a pita trying to get all the dark tarnish off. seems like it keeps coming back. it probably isnt but seems like it is.

im using a light oil and the 400 grit, its working okay

 

Most of the clear coat was already gone, what was left came off when I used the 3M scour/polish pads on them. They were rough on the aluminum - I remember I thought I ruined them when I was finished. At this point the aluminum was rough, very scratched with lots of white powdery residue.
Then I put the sock on the 3M thing and used the rubbing compound (its like a fine sand). That got rid of the rough scratches. After that I used the 3M thing with the aluminum polish and shined for what seemed like forever.
When all was done I used the cotton and aluminum polish and basically did it by hand until I was happy (meaning I was really fussy at first but as time went by I didn't spend as much time).
It was hard to get the black from coming out and toward the end I tended to just do it untill it was shiny. Those areas tended to look a little cloudy. The key when you get to the hand part is to use the cotton until it gets grey/black and then move to a clean part of the rag. I believe I tried a couple of names brands and settled on "mothers" but I can't remember why. I also used that on my aluminum moterbike engine.

I never used any chemical stripper b/c I left the middle painted part alone.