Refinishing Wheels

[Sam]

Hey guys, i've started refinishing my EMS soccerball wheels. Today I tried submerging them in garbage can filled with about 4 inches of acetone based chemical stripper from home depot. After a few hours, only the black paint on the inner details has began to come off. I've heard mixed reviews on leaving them in the chemical over night. These wheels are actually painted silver, and not simply clear coated over the bare aluminum as i first thought. Any tips on getting this done the right way? I tried the wire wheel briefly but it is just too abraisive and will require more work later on to smooth out.

I was not making much progress with fine grit sandpaper (see below)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/f7f8jg6ra4vcc1h/IMG_0628.JPG

Also, i had to take a grinder to the old ball joints in the lengthwise direction today. What is the deal with the bolts on these? They were pretty new looking grade8 bolts but they were hopelessly stuck inside the ball joint.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/tzpg6unbodz0g ... G_0732.JPG

[SwedeSport]

I would start out with several applications of aircraft stripper. Then once the paint is gone, have them bead blasted. Buy a wheel refinishing kit from Eastwood. Once the metal work is done, spray the paint in the recesses. While the paint is still soft, use acetone on a rag to wipe away the excess paint.

[Luke]

I dont even bother to strip, just take them out to have them bead blasted, instruct them to go light on the black areas. The factory paint is really durable and if its in good shape a light haze over with the bead blaster is enough to clean in up for refinishing. If the black is peeling then tell them to blast away. Depending on the finish you want you can either leave the glass bead satin finish on the exposed areas or polish out completely. These I just left as blast and they turned out nicely.
Next I mask the the whole wheel with a sheet of contact paper(drawer liner) and cut out the areas that will be black with an exacto knife. It takes a little while, I can do 4 wheels in about an hour.
Then shoot the black areas with a single stage urethane, I used eastwood satin black for these.
Then I cleared the whole wheel with a urethane clear.

All masked up

Mask and after being peeled

After Clear:

[Jordan]

Sam, did you take the take the load off the ball joint by propping up the spring under the a-arm?

[Geoff]

You have to put anti-seize compound on those bolts, especially the bottom ones. That car was sitting with those bolts right near the ground keeping moist and corroding happily until you came along. I've had to grind off both ends of one of those bolts before and attack the remnants with a big drill bit. Not much fun.

If you don't want to have the wheels bead blasted you can always try a stronger paint stripper. I've used some stuff that was the strongest that a TruValue hardware store carried. It worked on wheels for me. However, I'd recommend blasting and painting.

[Sam]

Jordan: Yes, I snapped the bolt with the control arm removed from the car. I eventually snapped it with the breaker because there was no other alternative. The ball joints were stuck in the spindles and required a similar painful removal. I cut off the nut with the grinder, but it still took a good 15 minutes of heating with the torch, a pickler fork and a large sledge to remove the remains.

Luke: The rims sat in water with flat tires so long that all the paint peeled down to the aluminum on the bottom portion of each rim. I imagine that they were sitting in puddles of water whenever it rained.

I want to replicate the satin finish, but I may go with gold for the details to match the limited edition GLE variant - although I know the centers were slightly different for them.

[sjones]

Great job on those wheels Luke, I think the stipple finish of the bead blasting looks very nice with the urethane coat. I was wondering how incas would look just bead blasted and clear coated.

[Sam]

Home depot stripper was a huge success. After a solid week in there, all of the silver paint was gone, leaving the rough edges of the black and corrosion spots to be cleaned up with steel wool. Here is what it looked like after coming out of submersion. You can see that there was quite a bit of surface corrosion, and the blast+clearcoat route would not be possible. Obviously if you refinish wheels for a living, 1 wheel per week is a bit slow, but i'm not in any hurry.



It cost me about 80 bucks to buy 6 gallons plus a steel garbage can. I didn't want to use plastic for obvious reasons, and although these steel garbage cans are not rated for holding water, they hold about 4 inches in the bottom just fine. I placed the can inside of a plastic tub just in case. The lid seals the fumes in 100%.

This week, i saw some construction workers with big buckets of stripper working on some architectural sheet metal. If i were to do it again, i would use their bulk supplier. They were using GFC inc in lodi nj.

[MattWatson]

Sam,

One method I have used (granted not on wheels) is to slather on quite a bit of stripper onto the surface, cover with plastic wrap, and then let it sit. The plastic wrap keeps the stripper active, because as it dries, it no longer does anything.

You then can go back and scrape a layer of finish off (in my case I used a metal scraper and a long bristle bbq brush.) All you have to do is rinse and repeat. (not litterally, at least until the end )

One reason that you may have had to let it sit so long, is that stripper only attacks the finish that it can reach, and doesn't penetrate the top layer very well, hence the scrape off route.

I guess you trade labour for time though. To give you an idea, I did an entire 1946 Nash 600 (big, boatlike), with three layers of paint in a day with only 2 gallons of stripper. Granted it was laquer instead of urethane, but all urethane needs is more applications.

[SwedeSport]

The paint Saab used on their wheels is some tough stuff. When I stripped and painted my Shelbys I had to do numerous applications and scrape in between to get them clean. I then sent them to be bead blasted on the faces. I hosed them in Rust Oleum Gloss Black.

There are plenty of places that can do blasting. Check with powder coat shops and see if they would be willing to just blast them so you can finish them yourself.

Once the chemical process has removed most of the paint, they bead blast rather easy. Gotta watch though, if they use actual sand they could pit them too much. Glass beads will be a little more gentle.