alaskan

The wheels on my '02 are pretty thrashed, but I'd like to keep them when I get new tires. The main issue is that the clearcoat is crazed and in come places completely flaking off as you can see in the pics. Also, there are rock chips and damage on the silver painted part. Is there a good how-to on refreshing them? My plan at this point would be to use stripper to get off the old clear and silver paint, clean them up, respray the silver and then clear the whole wheel. Is there a paint code for the silver? Is there a good way to keep the nice machined look on the face throughout the process?

alaskan

Well, no responses so I just jumped in with the Aircraft Stripper. Here's a close up of what a spoke looked like on one of the wheels:




And here's what the face of that wheel looks like after spending an hour stripping off the finish and lightly buffing the haze off:



I wish I could just wax it and leave because the machined surfaces of the wheel look great. However, I realized while working on the wheel that it would be more than impossible to keep the bead blast surface underneath the silver paint clean. It's so porous that it absorbs any kind of dirt/grease and looks terrible immediately. So today it's off to get some base silver and clear.

NDAZONE

I polished the stock aluminum wheels on my Z about 14 years ago. It took me 6 hours per wheel. They came to mirror shine and looked great. I followed the instructions on the Z31.com site. Wheel Polishing

alaskan

Finished the cleanup and polishing. Now time to mask the machined faces and hit the cast parts with some nason silver base before clearing everything.

Terdburgler

This looks great. I hope my ap1 wheels never start peeling. I really love their look.

alaskan

Insanely detailed tape job to keep the silver base coat off the faces:



Detail of finish inside spokes:



Wheel with tape removed, needs to have the finger prints and tape residue removed from the face:

alaskan

Cleared and ready to go. I might eventually wetsand and buff, but for now I'm ready to get the Bridgestone RE11a tires mounted and do some driving:



In and out in 12 minutes at Discount Tire, I love those guys like a brother:

alaskan

In summary, it took about $100 in materials (but that's enough paint to do 2 full sets of wheels) and 10-12 hours in labor for two wheels. I'm not really sure if it's worth it relative to paying a specialized wheel repair place, but they look pretty damn great.

Conedodger

Very nice job, I'm impressed! I stripped and painted a set years ago, but went the easy route and painted the whole wheel.

alaskan

Thanks. Spraying the whole thing with silver or another color and then clearing would have saved hours and hours of taping and polishing.