Alloy wheel refurb

[47p2]

The original wheels for the Audi A8 are diamond cut but the wheels on my car have been polished and lacquered. I needed a spare wheel for my car that would match the others and managed to find a slightly damaged wheel on ebay.





I removed the powder coating using 400 grade sandpaper on an air powered DA sander, then using 400 grade wet & dry I cleaned up the bare wheel face, then 1200 grade wet & dry to give a finer finish and eventually finishing with 2000 grade wet & dry.

Last night I started to polish up the wheel using Solvol Autosol and the results were encouraging although not as good as I needed, so today I spent another hour with the 2000 grade wet & dry to get a really smooth finish.


Click images for full size

This is the tiny marks that must be sanded out


The aim is to have a uniform even finish


Once prepared it took a maximum of 10 minutes to polish the wheel using the rotary and 10 minutes to finish by hand

















The alloy used in wheel making is not completely smooth, so a complete mirror finish would be almost impossible, plus if it was a mirror finish the lacquer would not adhere to it properly, so I am happy with my efforts. Just need to get it to the paint shop now for the painter to do his bit.


Once the wheel is back from the paint shop I'll post up the pictures.

[7even]

Looks good, a clear with etch properties is what your looking for. If the "shop" is a wheel specialist they should have some in stock (providing they do polished wheels).