79 Wheel Refurbishing

Cool Blue North · Post by **Cool Blue North** » Thu Feb 03, 2005 9:44 pm

Need a little advice here. My Glory Red 79 is getting darn near perfect but

one problem I've got to remedy is that the rims have got multiple scratches, gouges, from a quarter century of sloppy tire swaps. Can these things be polished up and brought back to life? Is high speed polishing the answer? If they could be polished up to a chrome like appearance I could possibly get in to that. I don't want to experiment on them and screw them up royally. Any suggestions?

Jeff Bennetts · Post by **Jeff Bennetts** » Fri Feb 04, 2005 9:22 am

CBN, I've seen them polished before. You may have to sand the wheels first , if I'm not mistaken they have a hardened finish that would need to be removed before you buff them.

jb

jt · Post by jt » Sat Feb 05, 2005 11:11 am

CBN,

Jeff is right on the money, they can be polished and you will have to remove the silver anodizing. It is a tedous task, and took me quite a while to do it, and in the process removed all fingerprints from the tips of my fingers and very sore. I started out with 240 grit wet & dry paper and worked through the grit size up to 600 grit and finished up with Mothers mag polished. But I think they do look nice although not original looking finish. It is very difficult to get right up to where the spoke attaches to the rim though. I have a pic I can send, if you want to see how it turned out, it's large though.

Jeff Bennetts · Post by **Jeff Bennetts** » Sat Feb 05, 2005 11:40 am

jt wrote:CBN,

Jeff is right on the money, they can be polished and you will have to remove the silver anodizing. It is a tedous task, and took me quite a while to do it, and in the process removed all fingerprints from the tips of my fingers and very sore. I started out with 240 grit wet & dry paper and worked through the grit size up to 600 grit and finished up with Mothers mag polished. But I think they do look nice although not original looking finish. It is very difficult to get right up to where the spoke attaches to the rim though. I have a pic I can send, if you want to see how it turned out, it's large though.

can you resize it to 800x600 and post it here? if not send it to me and i'll do it.

cbxsix@yahoo.com

jb

jt · Post by jt » Sat Feb 05, 2005 12:32 pm

Jeff, I did resize it and still would not up load, I'll send it to you to try and later I'll try to get a close up of the rim and upload.

Thanks

here you go,

Cool Blue North · Post by **Cool Blue North** » Sat Feb 05, 2005 8:51 pm

A picture of your wheels would be great. Please email it direct to lesfinnigan@shaw.ca. Tell me, how do you think a process like sandblasting or bead blasting would have worked rather than working your fingers to the bone?

Thanks for the advice.

CBN

jt · Post by jt » Sat Feb 05, 2005 11:11 pm

CBN,

I'll get a pic of the wheel to you tomorrow. I am not sure about bead blasting first and than polishing, in theory it sounds like it would help the process along. In fact I had ask that same question tonight to Tom N and he is not sure if helped on a item he tried. I had read on another board to b/blast first and then polish, which is why I had ask TomN. I was lucky as the spoke portion on my rims where still in nice shape and shiny, I only did the rim portion.