better way to remove bad clear coat from rims?

MasterofDisaster

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About a year ago, I noticed that my rims had developed a milky or beige mess in the clear coat. I couldn't get it off with a Dremel wire brush. The Dremel and rubbing compound might have made it look worse. It looks sort of like
wheel before polishing.JPG
but to the naked eye it was milky white or pale yellow/beige.

I tried some #3 steel wool and elbow grease on it, and that removed enough of the clear coat that I was able to remove the rest with the Dremel w/ wire brush. I also tried the Dremel 320-Grit Finishing Abrasive Buffs. The abrasive wore off pretty fast, even at lowest speed and light pressure.
The good news is that the buffs make a good carrier for Soft Scrub and rubbing compound. Soft Scrub seemed to be more abrasive and removed clear coat faster.
I used the Dremel and a regular fabric buff with polishing compound to polish the aluminum. I also tried jewelers rouge, and both were about the same polish. The jewelers rouge keeps your work area a little cleaner because polishing compound flies all over the place. Sprayed with generic clear coat, the rims look like
wheel polished.JPG
You can see the stripes where I masked off the original clear coat. I'm going to let the clear coat dry for a week or so before polishing it. It's not perfect, but it's better than the scaly crap that developed in the last couple years.

On Sun, 30 Aug 20, I hand buffed the rims with a Scotchbrite non stick pad and rubbing compound. Then I polished them by hand with a Scotchbrite non stick pad and polishing compound.
View media item 8468View media item 8467I think they look nice - at least as good as they have looked in years.
 
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Rich

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I've been trying to find a clearcoat stripper for a while now with no luck. I want to remove the clearcoat on my fan blades and polish the bare metal.
 

Iceman62

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@Rich some pics of your rims would help...to see what you're working with.
 

Rich

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Not sure what you mean by fan blades. I used the Dremel 320-Grit Finishing Abrasive Buffs with some Soft Scrub or rubbing compound to remove the clear coat because of the curved surfaces on my rims. Once you've removed the clear coat, there are many choices for metal polishes.

Here are the fanblade wheels. These aren't mine, but they're exactly the same. Mine are in great conditon, I just wanted to strip the clear off of them and polish the metal using Mother's Mag Polish. I've read where some have used Aluminum Aircraft Stripper, but it no longer has the chemical in it that really makes it work, so it's useless now.

fanblades.JPG
 
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MasterofDisaster

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My best advice it to leave them alone. Polished aluminum looks great when it's clean, but it's going to require constant cleaning. Your wheels look great, and they're easy to clean.

You have enough flat surface that an oscillating tool could take care of some parts of your wheels. There are more expensive ones and there are cheap ones. You could use a Dremel with a buff for the parts you can't hit with the oscillating tool.
 

MasterofDisaster

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I'm not sure. Someone told me that my rims may have been plastic dipped. I guess you could try the stripper on an inconspicuous place and see if it works.
 

Rich

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Spray on aircraft paint remover?

View attachment 75741

That's the stuff I looked in to, but several testomonies stated that it didn't work well without the Methylene. The old formula had the Methylene and worked great, but was very toxic. I guess I missed the train on that one.
 

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