Alloy Wheel repair

Xithus

Hey all.

I decided to try repairing my alloy myself as they are quite bad. I watched a couple of videos and managed to successfully complete one.

Now I was using sandpaper and it was hugely time consuming (they really are bad) so for the remaining three I was thinking of using a grinder or sander. Does anyone have any suggestions on wether either of those would work or if I should just stick with the paper? It looks like I'm removing lacquer of some sort in addition to working out the kinks. Possibly from a botched job prior.

Thanks.

nd

Could you post a picture of one of them? And what did you do with the first one? Sand the metal flat? If there are deep gouges on them imo you should use filler to fill them (removing any loose material first) and then sand that level.

Xithus

Hey ND thanks for the reply.

I sanded down the first one with sandpaper, filled in the gouges with filler, sanded again and then painted.

The sanding bit took far longer than I had anticipated, so I'm thinking i'll use a Grinder or Sander if either a suitable for a wheel. I've attached a before and after on the first wheel, you can see where I wasn't able to remove some of the previous lacquer or whatever it was that was already on the wheel.

nd

What grit sandpaper were you using?

I did the sisters alloys recently just to see how it'd go(she didn't care what they looked like)

They were awful.

before


I wasn't trying to get them perfect by any means.

I started using 80 grit sandpaper. I used my lidl "dremel" using the wire wheel attachment in the tight areas to get as much of the black off as possible.

I used my angle grinder wire wheel attachment


around the edge of the rim to knock down the deep gouges.

then gave it all a quick sanding using 180 grit paper, then 600.
I then gave it a couple of coats ofprimer, then silver alloy paint, then a couple of light coats of lacquer. They came out fairly decent considering.
after


I wouldn't have dreamed of using the angle grinder attachment on my own wheels though. I'd have filled them and sanded them down.


After doing the first one and being annoyed with the paint getting on the tyre I broke the bead on the rest of them and it made it alot easier.

I used a similar method to this to break the bead

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K42tyxPHHTs

but used a windowsill and trolley jack instead.

fret_wimp2

Alloy Wheel & Tyre Clinic in bray will diamond cut them back to factory standard for 125 a go.

Pricy, but for the work & tooling required to do this its probably a good price. Just to decide if i can spend that or if i can live with the scratch for a few months.
Also need to figure out if refinishing them leaves them more prone to white worm, asked the Alloy Wheel & Tyre clinic for their advice on this.

fret_wimp2

Update that may help someone in future:

Contacted the Alloy Wheel & Tyre Clinic in Blanch. They can do it for 120 + vat per wheel. Nice guys, very informative.

They bake on a new coat of laquer at 120 degrees, which is the factory finish, not a hand rubbed laquer some places use so no white worm after a year or so.

120 + vat is Steeeeep though considering the rim can be had for 150 new.
Also, most places wont take cars in on Saturday, and dont have spare wheels meaning the car has to stay there for 2 days and you have to get a lift arranged from Blanch.

All in all its becoming a big headache and cost so probably just going to try and ignore it for a year or two and maybe get it done when i need new tires.


Recommendation: dont buy diamond cut alloys if someone else drives your car!