Help!! Polishing Sandblasted Chrome.

[vinnie700]

hey all!

i have a set of Work Ewing 3 peice mesh wheels that i have been restoring. first things first: the wheels have been welded into 1 peice so nothing can be removed so the face plate cant/couldnt be removed!..

ok, so now this is my problem. the rims started off with a polished lip/dish on the outside of them, but i got them sand blasted to remove some super thick 2pot paint in the most hard to reach places and they blasted the whole rim, dish/lip of the rim aswell.

Im pretty sure the lip of the rim was originally chrome.. either way, it was polished! anyway the lip has been 'frosted' now and none of the chrome has come off (assuming it has chrome on it).

heres my question. what would be the best way to polish this lip to a mirror finish/back to the chrome plating.

i was going to just put it on the car and have the rim rotating, and go through the grades of sand paper on it from corse to fine (wet sanding), just holding the paper on the lip as its rotating. then finishing off with some polishing compound, autosol or something similar. would this work? hopefully i can get it down smooth enough without taking off the chrome.

here is a pic of the original rim/lip of the wheel so you know what i want it to look like again.



and heres a pic of what the rims look like now




Thanks in advanced!

[vinnie700]

bump... can anyone help me? i dont want to start the job before i have a second opinion and i dont want them to rust !

[justme102]

Your grinding plan sounds possible to me. But the polishing... Thats a no go. If you want to waste time on polishing the rims then thats ok.
Take a look in the sticky threads and try some search here on the forum. There are some threads they will tell you the right way in polishing your parts.

[vinnie700]

hi, thanks for the reply. i have searched and i havnt found anything about polishing metal from sand blasted to polished. what i have said in my first post so far is what i have learned on these forums. i dont want to polish the whole rim, just the dish/lip of the rim. i will be painting the whole face of the wheel, including the chrome bits behind the face plate. i just want the lip/dish polished.

So you think that i will succesfully be able to get the dish/lip back to shiney metal with the sand paper idea, but not beable to polish it to a mirror finish in the same way?

[justme102]

If you grind the lip up to 2000 it will be possible to get a mirror like finish. But it will take more time then the usual way.

[baz]

Originally Posted by justme102

If you grind the lip up to 2000 it will be possible to get a mirror like finish. But it will take more time then the usual way.

if it was originaly polished then your way of doing would work but if it was a real chrome plate i don t think you will be able to do anything without removing the old plating first

[Tng21]

they just look like polished rims to me mate, well were. They'd be a lot more shinet if they were chrome plated. Sand those suckers down. You wouldnt need to go up to 2000grit, up to 600 then through the compounds and it should look great.

E30 wheels?

[vinnie700]

cheers guys!

ok well ill try and do the sanding idea from 600 grit to 2000 grit and some polishing compounds and upload some pics and let you guys know how it went.

e30 wheels? nah they are Work Ewings, japanese made racing wheel. they are going on my 180sx.



Also! another quick question. Since the entire wheel has been blasted, does that mean i will have to paint the whole thing? will that metal rust? .. like the part where the tyre goes on to?

[Tng21]

you wont need to go from 600 to 2000 grit.. Id start at a 220 grit, then 320, 400, then 600 and polish from there mate. If you go to 2000 then start polishing youl be undoin all the sanding youve done.

black emeory is equal to 400 grit, so going to 2000 grit then to emory youl be undoing all your work. I only go up to 600 grit on my work and that comes up with great results. See my other posts on threads for pics of how my stuff has come up with only going up to 600 grit.

[vinnie700]

oh ok, sorry i mis read your first post. i thought you ment go from 600 to 2000. the thing is i dont have any of those polishing compounds. i only have a finishing one, which i think is the equivelent to "white". so since im just going to be using sandpapers and then the finishing polish, which grit do you think i should go up to?

and what do you think about it rusting the whole wheel?