Wheel refinishing

Has anyone media blasted or some how stripped the finish of LTD mag wheels? Anyone have any success in making some 40yr old wheels look good? I'm up for most anything now..

I would call Les and see if he is set up to do wheels. Doing it yourself can be satisfying, but it is a ton of work.

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I polished the rim with a sisal wheel and black cutting compound then masked and blasted with aluminum oxide (can't remember the grit #.) For paint I used Gunkote. It was easy to spray and doesn't use a primer so that's a plus. A lot of work for sure but worth the effort in my opinion.

P1010502 by nessism , on Flickr

It has been more than several years, so I don't recall exactly, but on the silver areas I probably used wet-dry sandpaper & bronze wool then blue magic or mothers. I'm pretty sure the paint is Duplicolor engine enamel (without primer). The original stock paint is pretty tough, so I just scuffed it up & hit the corners using a dremel. I used grease to mask the silver part of the spokes & around the drum. The rear wheel still looks pretty good, but the front needs to be repainted.


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I cleaned mine really good and sprayed with caliper paint. The masking is a PITA.

Those wheels look awesome! I have a soda blaster and thought maybe I could go bare silver with no black just for a different look. I think I can blast the black off and then come back and polish as factory. I just don't wanna kill that LTD look.

I got a blast cabinet from a friend for free, but it took a bit of money to get it working. The results are awesome! I am using 80 grit glass bead for media. I elected to go solid gold to save the expense of masking or more than one color. The wheels I had powder coated.

Big improvement. What did the powder coat set you back?

I also had the rear swing arm and brake stay coated in a metallic silver, in the same order. The lot was around $250, but got a 24 hour turn around.