hey guys, I was thinking of refinishing my factory aluminum wheels, and womdered if you had any thoughts. They appear to have some sort of gelcoat or clear on them that is scrathed, etc. Should I try to sand blast them, or just wetsand and paint? What about powdercoating?

 

Well, most of us would probably ask why you'd want to do that to factory wheels when you may be able to get really cool aftermarket rims for not much more...but we're not here to judge. Whatever your taste is, we support it here!

There may be a shop in your area that specializes in wheel repair. Such a shop may also be willing to do the restoration for a fee. I don't know where you are, but we only have one such shop in the Baltimore area that I know of. It seems to be a business that not a lot of people are into. Good luck, and post pix when you're done!

 

well, currently I have rockcrawler wheels that are black powder coated, look great, but have too little backspacing, so they rub a bit on road...I am afraid of what they might do offroad...I have my factory wheels that with the 31's, didn't rub at all offroad, so I am trying to get some used tires for them for offroading with aggressuive tread, but until then (as they are hard to find used), I was thinking of sticking my tires back on the factory wheels after painting or powder coating them black, and run them with no centers, should look pretty cool, maybe just stick with that and unload my new wheels...

 

If you wanted to re-clear them, do not sand blast them. For this, I would recommend a chemical stripping agent to remove the factory clear coat, then a bit of elbow grease to polish them back up all nice and pretty like.

If you are going to use a colored paint or powder coat, then sand blast away. Blasting is by far the easiest and fastest way to get the finish off and make the surface uniform. I went through this with a set of 1st gen Dodge Intrepid rims (which I still have and never completed). The blasting really did a nice job at removing the paint, but the machined finish was matted when done with little to no way to restore it without remachining it. So I started the process of sanding them down and polishing them back to a mirror finish (or atleast that was the plan). Now I'm thinking of just painting them up black and putting them up on eBay.