Cleaning up aluminum rims

[scott85]

i just bought a set of the gm aluminum 6 lug rims the kind that has the half dollar sized circles around the perimeter. i want to clean them up, ie, strip the clear coat and polish them. any one ever have them done with plastic media blasting? the guy i spoke to says that the plastic wont hurt the aluminum, but i was wondering if anyone here has any experience that would indicate otherwise. Im really not loving the idea of using aircraft stripper and spending the rest of my live cleaning these up!

thanks!
Scott

 

[obijuan]

blast em and reclear em. then all you gotta do is buff em. or you could chrome them and thats waaay less maintenence.

 

[HarryH3]

The spray bomb aircraft stripper actually does a pretty good job. I have a friend that fixes curb scrapes on high end car wheels for a living. He did a job for someone that wanted the clear coat removed and then new clear coat applied. The aircraft stripper and a plastic pot scrubber did an excellent job of removing the old clear coat.