Polishing OEM wheels

[stupidwhitesupra]

I decided to take the plunge and chemical strip my oem wheels to go for the polished look. However, no stripper I buy seems to get this oem paint off. I started with typical paint stripper in a can, and have now gotten to straight up aircraft stripper and nothing seems to do the trick. I’ve been waiting 30 minutes between coats (thick coats by the way) and barely any paint has come off at all. Any ideas on what the deal is?

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[J29DB03]

Wish they put that much effort into painting the rest of the car. May have to go the grinder route and then clean them up.

 

[lucky phil]

I decided to take the plunge and chemical strip my oem wheels to go for the polished look. However, no stripper I buy seems to get this oem paint off. I started with typical paint stripper in a can, and have now gotten to straight up aircraft stripper and nothing seems to do the trick. I’ve been waiting 30 minutes between coats (thick coats by the way) and barely any paint has come off at all. Any ideas on what the deal is?

Modern environmental paint strippers are pretty shite. Back in the day we used to use a stripper on commercial jets and the paint would literally come off in sheets. I've suffered the same issues myself and needed to resort to mechanical stripping. My advice is to remove the tyres and have the paint bead blasted off. I have a bead blaster and thats what I've needed to do in the past.
Phil

 

[jchadwell]

Do a search. There’s an older thread from a couple years ago where someone did this. I think the results were excellent. Can’t remember how that poster stripped the finish but if you find the thread might help you.

 

[jchadwell]

https://www.supramkv.com/threads/polished-oem-wheels.12633/

 

[stupidwhitesupra]

Update, it just took a LOT of coats, and an entire weekend chipping away with plastic scrapers and slowly polishing. And that was only two wheels. Maybe I’m just stupid and don’t know what I’m doing, but I’ve never tried a DIY thing like this before. Will do the fronts next weekend. Very pleased!

 

[lucky phil]

Update, it just took a LOT of coats, and an entire weekend chipping away with plastic scrapers and slowly polishing. And that was only two wheels. Maybe I’m just stupid and don’t know what I’m doing, but I’ve never tried a DIY thing like this before. Will do the fronts next weekend. Very pleased!

Yep modern paint strippers. Environmentally safe but you use 10 times more of it and still get a worse result.
Phil

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