Painting Wheels with Strippers: Need Advice

My first thought also, found this link before I even opened it.

Aircraft stripper. That stuff is NASTY!

But it works great if you don't have a blaster.

All the places 'round here with a blaster want huge money for media blasting. Unacceptable.

The magic stripping combo is a combo of methanol and methylene chloride in a semi paste. Not too long ago I stripped the rims on the mercedes to polish the fuchs bundts, it took stripping each wheel twice with touchup to get to bare metal, but apparently you can apply the paint stripper and use celophane to prevent evaporation of the solvent. A good stripper will chew through regular gloves so you might consider getting some neoprene gloves which are impervious to chemicals.

If it was me I'd find a place to bead blast the rims, it seriously took around 1 hour per rim to strip them so if you can find someone to blast them for 20-30$ each it might be worth doing it that way.

Here, I'm gonna make you feel better by showing you the BMW wheels that I'm trying to do the same thing to (bad paint, a decade of caked-on brake dust, etc). I have no pity for you ;)

This is the one (of four) that is "mostly" done. My fingers hurt just looking at it. Used stripper, 5 other solvents (brake cleaner works surprisingly well), scotchbrite various grits, sandpaper, and all kinds of other random things that I tried. I can't justify getting them professionally done, as they're for my "budget build" that will be ugly anyhow, so I'm just doing the best I can by hand.

It took me around 20-25 hours to strip, sand and polish my rims and they are by no means perfect. The mercedes rims are forged so you can't really get them looking perfect. One guy on the mercedes forum polishes the crap out of aluminum and got a set of 4 alloy bundts in very good condition and it took him 40hours to get them to a mirror finish.

Looks like a nice project, polished aluminum is tits!

benzbaron wrote: ... polished aluminum tits!

Somehow that seems appropriate in a thread with a title like this one has...

benzbaron wrote: It took me around 20-25 hours to strip,

It took me less time to build a wooden blasting cabinet!

I don't know much about strippers but one day in Hunt's Point a hooker jumped up on the side of our truck and offered to do anything for $20. She said it was the first time she had ever painted a garage before.

Good feedback - thanks to those that posted their experiences. I'm going to look into how much a shop would charge to blast the wheels. Second option is buying/building a cabinet and doing it myself.

Also if you do get them blasted, they will have an awesome profile for supreme paint adhesion!

This is not the GRM way I ~used~ to do things like this, but back then I was young and foolish and my time was worth nothing.

Take the set of wheels to a powdercoat shop. Preferably one that does mostly decorative ironwork or industrial stuff. That way you don't get the Harley-Hot Rod surcharge.

They'll blast them clean and powdercoat them so they'll look like a new set of wheels.

You use the gazillion hours you'd spend wearing your fingers to nubs while greatly improving you odds to get cancer for something else.

This thread needs more pictures.

That said I used glass beads in my blasting cabinet for my last set. I then used the Duplicolour wheel paint. No issues after 5+ years.

Was lucky enough to get a buddy to blast some Speedlines I had gotten a few years back. Did a thin coat of flat black to protect them in the off season, and meant to get around to refinishing them properly in the off season.

Damn you procrastination.

Lately I've been considering just sending them to Wheels America for the whole job. $460 almost seems worth it for a professional job that I'm not putting off or caught in the middle of when the season turns.

Don't powdercoat aluminum wheels. It messes with the heat treating. Paint 'em, just like the factory did.

Although the powdercoat shop is an excellent idea for having them stripped.

Great thread. I've got a set of BBS RXII wheels for the Subaru I just picked up and a set of old 15" basket weaves (the one Irish4j linked) to clean up.

I'm thinking of going black center with a polished lip on the RXIIs and bronze/gold on the basket weaves,

When I did my minilites the factory coating was almost rubberized and was impossible to blast. My bead blaster couldn't touch it and the powdercoater wanted too much for the extra blast time so I went the stripper route. After I scraped as much as I could I used a heated pressure washer to get the rest which worked wonders.

I might be tempted to hit them with some oven cleaner first, to clean them and remove any large areas of paint or anodizing, just to minimize time in the blasting cabinet.