Cleaning/restoring 3 Piece Wheels

[Bren81]

Hi everyone. I searched but couldn't find anything similar to my problem.

I am trying to clean years of grim, water marks and light corrosion off my wheels. They are Enkei Winsome 3 piece wheels and have a lot of bolts that I am having trouble cleaning around. I have successfully used some metal polish to clean the dish part of the wheel and using a clay block and paint cleaner on the painted middle section of the wheels, but I am struggling to clean the water marks/corrosion around the bolts.

Has anyone got any tips?

I was thinking about removing 1 bolt at a time and cleaning that spot, replace bolt and repeat.

Is this safe?

Should I get the wheels re-balanced after I do this?

What torque for the bolts?

Am I making this more complicated than it needs to be?

Here a a few pics (I hope this works)

Corrosion/Water Marks around bolts

Wheels before cleaning

Wheel now.

[XGTRX]

Before you take the bolts out you can try with a dremel with an extension, polishing head and some metal polish and see how you go. If no good then yes you can take a couple of bolts off at a time. You can always check the torque with a manual torque wrench when you take them off. Then use the dremel to polish it.

Its a prick of a job but well worth it.

Edited September 15, 2015 by XGTRX

[PranK]

God damn that looks awesome! Can only imagine the satisfaction.

[Trex]

my rs's are in a similar state, have tried almost everything and have been told they need to be sanded and re polished.

If you find anything, please post up products and results.

[junkie]

i pulled all the bolts out of my GT2's and pulled the centres out for paint. Now need to polish the lips and re-paint the inside of the barrels, prick of a job tho

[Trex]

going on from removing bolts and barrels.

search youtube for a how to polish bbs rs's. there is a 5 part video explaining everything.

[Bren81]

Thanks Guys,

I am going to pull the wheel off the car tonight, sitting hunched over on cold concrete for 3 hours last night killed my back.

I will try with the dremel with the bolts still in first but I think it is going to be harder than removing a bolt or 2 at a time then cleaning/polishing by hand.

I will post up pics when I am done.

Trex - To get them to the stage they are now I have just used Autosol Metal Polish with a tennis ball wrapped in a microfibre cloth, the tennis ball made it easy to do the dish part of the wheel. http://www.supercheapauto.com.au/online-store/products/Autosol-Polish-Metal-350g.aspx?pid=345178#Recommendations

However, my wheel are raw alloy, no clear coat or anything. From the reading I have done online, clear coat on some wheels is really hard to cut and polish but it can be done.

For the painted middle section I have used Meguires Ultimate Compound. It is awesome stuff, cleaned up and and removed really deep scratches in the paint on my Patrol. http://www.supercheapauto.com.au/online-store/products/Meguiar-s-Ultimate-Compound-450mL.aspx?pid=214309#Recommendations

I will check out the polishing BBS RS videos tonight.

Cheers.

[Bren81]

Small update of what I got done tonight.

I tried removing 2 bolts at a time but it wasnt working very well, I let all the air out then took out 4-5 bolts at a time. Screwed around for hours before I worked out a quickish way to do it. Takes about 45nm of torque to undo the bolts so I am tightening them back up to 40nm because I figure it takes a bit extra to crack the bolt. I have decided I will get them rebalanced and checked when I am finished just to be safe.

Cleaned loose crap off with Shellite, then cleaned off the chunky corrosion with a tiny steel brush dremel attachment by hand (not in the dremel) then polished by hand the remaining scuff and marks etc with the metal polish. Cleaned up the head of the bolts with a polishing attachment in the dremel with metal polish.

It is going to take forever (took 5 hours to do about a third of the wheel) but I am really happy with the result.

Before

After

The wheel so far.

[XGTRX]

Its a prick of a job. Looks amazing though.

[junkie]

spent about 4 hours on mine today, arm about to fall off

has anyone dealt with deep pitting in the aluminium? i can sand it all out but some it is fairly deep and dont want to take too much material off

[Bren81]

I have finished one of the wheels. It looks good but I am not happy with the centre.

I have decided to go all out of the next wheel. I was thinking about getting the centre electrplated (either chrome or a satin finish) but first I am going to try polishing it myself.

I completely dissasembled the wheel this time. Used paint stripper on the centre then polished up a section to see how it would look, I think I am going to be able to get it to a level I am happy with. If I cant I will look at getting the centres painted or electroplated.

Pics...

First wheel finished. (centre is still painted, hosed it down to see how the raw alloy would look after the water dried)

2nd Wheel pulled apart.

Test polishing the centre after stripping paint. (was only a quick sand and polish, should look better when I spend more time on it)

[GTRPSI]

I did something similar to a old 3 piece OZ Racing wheel set, only difference was they were clear coated which was peeling and really corroded.

I ended up sanding the outers to get the clear coat off, working my way to 1200 grit, with each sand removing the sand marks from the last grit.

Then buffed with a wool buff and cutting compound on a drill, final finish was done with Autosol, they came up mirrored like chrome.

You may be spending too much time on them because you are not sanding through the corrosion.

Those inners with the rough cast are best sanded smooth first to remove the rough casting, then polished.

[Bren81]

I finally finished the first wheel today. I am really happy with how it looks but I am going to look at getting someone else to do the rest of them. Wasn't too hard just took a huge amount of time.

Still missing a few bolts that snapped when I took them out.

[NISSAN GTR]

Great work there congrats so "shiny"

Heres what i learnt - my post here http://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/406788-my-attempt-refurbishing-3-piece-work-rims/

[Bren81]

Last update.

Finally got around to replacing a couple of bolts that snapped when I pulled apart the wheel, fitted, balanced, etc.

Really happy with how this one has turned out, but I am going to get the test polished professionally. Not worth the time or effort to do it myself. I reckon I spent 40hours on this wheel.

[Trex]

they look brand new mate. you must be happy.

[GH05T]

I suspect you will need to clear coat them. If you have sanded and lolished their gonna fade up fast without a new clear coat.

[Bren81]

I was thinking about some sort of protection for them. I would prefer to avoid clear coat and have found references to "wheel wax" that protect raw alloy wheels. I think I will give that a try forst. The car also only does <1000kms a year, always garaged, etc so I am hoping this wheel wax stuff will suit.

[NISSAN GTR]

Unfortunately , they now look like crappy muscle chromies , really need to pick a half decent wheel to start with when attempting this .

[junkie]

LOL harsh

i would say, paint the centres instead. too much shiny metal doesn't suit a modern(ish) car like the R32, its more of an oldskool muscle car thing