Help!! Polishing Sandblasted Chrome.

[Tng21]

you would really save yourself a lot of time and effort just buying the other two compunds rather than sanding up to 2000. will make your work come up a lot better too. really, just buy the other two compounds, or three, emeory , green and pink then use your white.

On the wheel rusting. Have the rest of the wheel painted mate to solve this problem. Then just polish the lip

[vinnie700]

heres what ive done so far. this is up to 400 grit and then a quick polish with autosol. just from the water from the wet sanding process the wheel has started to rust!! i better get it painted quick..

is it ok for me to put rust treatment on the polished lip? ill just give the whole wheel a spray with it before i paint it.

[Tng21]

see now thats a pretty good start ate, if you were to keep going to 600, the green polish, then pink, then your white euivilant, it will look the business.

AUtosol, are you using the normal autosol you find pretty much in all car acessory shops? Coz if you read the pack carefully, it says not to use on mirror finishes as it has a small grit in the paste which will scratch your work once its mirrored up.

The compounds arent very expensive at all and will save you bags of time and get a better finish. If you had the black emory, you wouldnt even need to sand with a 600 grit paper as 400 paper is sort of equal to emory, so you sand with 400, the emory it, then stainless ( green ) then pink, then white and your done.

Are you in the uk or elswhere?

[vinnie700]

thanks, yeah in the last picture i sanded up to 400.

Im in New Zealand, so i dont know if the polishing compounds go by the same names or grades or whatever, i had a look at the auto shop down the road yesterday and they didnt have any.

and the autosol that i used was one for polishing. ("For Cleaning and Polishing Metals")

i think i might try and find some black emory and use that then finish with some autosol. i really like the satin kind of finish now that i see it. comparing it to the front wheels of my car (which havnt been sand blasted yet) i prefer this satin finish over the original mirror finish. do you think if i stop and emory then go straight to white it will be ok?

[Tng21]

well if its the satin finish your gonna go with then yeah what you then said will be fine mate.

Although on nice wide rims i do prefer the mirror polished rims, look so sweet once kept clean, they really do.

If you go satin, then emory and white will still come up with a good shine id say. Although the emory might take out some of the lines on the rim and maybe wont have such a satin look, maybe more mirror but not entirely.

If you do go mirror, then read the packet instructions carefully as the autosol we have in the uk says its for polishing and cleaning metal, but just after instructions says something like "*Please note. Not recommended for mirror finishes such as mirror finish alloys. For these applications use Autosol Showroom polish."

[baz]

if you want the satin finish , just have the wheel turning and hold a scotchbrite pads against the lip and thats it .
as for the rusting problem , i don t understand how you can have rust because those wheels are cast aluminium and aluminium does not rust !!
the only rust you could have would be on those bolts(if they are metal) around the rim centerpiece
i have been polishing wheels for nearly 20 years and never saw an aluminium wheel rust

[vinnie700]

i thought they might rust if they were sand blasted or something lol. and yeah the bolts do rust. but the center peice kind of corrodes. its got a really high magnesium content. all of those racing wheels do, its for weight reasons. and that had like some kind of salt corrosion on it or something before i got them blasted. i was just wondering if something like that would happen to the rest of the rim? im not too sure.

if you look at this picture i took you can see there is like a line of rust on the alloy dish.. lol i guess theres a first for everything?

[FigureLLC]

i think the rust line is just contamination from the bolts. can you pull those bolts out and replace them with stainless?

[jrow]

vinnie700,

The 'white stuff' that you see where the center section connects to the outer rim is "oxidation". (I guess you could call it aluminum rust)Another problem I can see is if that oxidation is not removed from under the center section where it connects the rim it's going to reappear in time. I would suggest that you pull them apart and clean the oxidation out from between the two parts. Another thought would be to use an acid wash to get the oxidation out between the two parts, but again I don't know whether that would leach totally in between the two pieces. I'd also replace the bolts with stainless steel as suggested.

John

[vinnie700]

after i had the rims sand blasted i sprayed them with rust treatment and let it soak in between where the face plate meets the rim all around the wheel. i cant take the face plate apart, and i cant take out the bolts either. i have had the bolts sand blasted clean of rust at the and i put rust treatment on them at the same time. and i will be painting the whole face of the wheel with laquor so i think that should be ok and stop it from oxidising again.

do you think that will be good enough?

its a long story why the wheels cant be pulled apart anymore. but trust me they absoulty cant. not if you want to put them back together again. lol