Polishing Aluminum Wheels

[Jeff H]

Over the winter I picked up a used truck that had some weathered polished aluminum wheels. The one nice day we had, I cleaned up one of the wheels by using Soft Scrub to clean it to start with, and then I dug around the garage and found some 3M Marine Restorer & Wax which is for heavily oxidized finishes. There was some pitting I couldn't do anything about, but it cleaned up pretty nice. I sold the wheels/tires because they were the wrong offset but wanted people to see the potential. I did all the rubbing/buffing by hand on a 40 degree day so better conditions would end up with better results. Here are some pictures before and after.

sorry about the size.

[YENKO DEUCE REGISTRY]

Impressive!!

[ORIGLS6]

I think we had discussed this earlier Marlin. I did pretty much the same as you on the 7" Americans I have on my Nova.
I started with Wet/Dry 400 grit and went through the finer, finer, finer grits. Even used some white scotchbite pads (very fine) for some tough areas. The final stages were 0000 Steel Wool with polishing compound and then Mothers Mag Polish on some old sweatshirts. They're not perfect, but I drive the car so I wasn't after perfection. They clean up easy and take very little attention a couple of times a year.




Re: your thoughts for the 60 series tires, ...... talk to the Mayor first. I wanted to run my American TTs (7" x 14" with a 1½" positive offset) and ProTrac 275-60s on the rear. He told me they wouldn't fit unless I jacked the car a LOT, ..... or cut the fender lip, ..... or stretched the fenders. As usual, he was dead-on. Even with the F70 14s I had to install air shocks for clearance, especially on the right rear. IIRC he told me Novas typically have less clearance on the right rear than on the left.

BTW, the wheel/tire combo looks GREAT on my FAVORITE DEUCE!! [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/biggthumpup.gif[/img] [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/biggthumpup.gif[/img]

[YENKO DEUCE REGISTRY]

Thanks, I agree on the tire thing - I'm just going to leave it alone, I have 2 Jr Dragsters and 2 project muscle cars to work on..... [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/eek.gif[/img]

[Dave Rifkin]

I was watching an old episode of Gears this week and Stacey David did a short segment on a product called Shark Hide. It's supposed to protect metal and Stacey says that you can wipe it on polished metal and it is supposed to maintain that shine for up to 1 year. Has anyone tried it before? I figured after spending all that time restoring these old aluminum wheels it would be nice to have something to make your life easier.

[RPOLS3]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: ORIGLS6</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
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Not much cooler than redlines on 5 spokes.......... [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/headbang.gif[/img]