Hey Guys, ChrisFix here! And today I'm gonna show you how to repair aluminum rims.
So if you have aluminum rims and they have any kind of damage such as this curb or gutter rash, whatever you want to call it
Or even if your rims have the clear coat that's bubbling up
And it just doesn't look good at all,
Or if you even just have simple scratches like this
This video is gonna go through the process that will show you how to fix your rims to make them look really good again.
So let's begin!
With this process we're going to keep the tire on the rim to make it really simple, and we have the rim off the car.
The next thing you want to do is remove the center cap from the rim.
Just gonna want to pop this out.
For most cars, just tap the cap outwards and it will pop out just like that.
OK, so I just really just want to quickly outline the basic steps for fixing an aluminum rim
After you get that center cap out, the first thing you want to do is clean the rim.
After the rim is nice and clean, we're gonna work on all our scratches.
And by work on it, I mean we're gonna sand em' down, and make em' nice and smooth.
After we sand em' down, make em' nice and smooth, we're gonna strip the clear coat from the rim.
After we strip the clear coat from the rim, we're gonna polish the whole rim.
Make it nice and shiny.
After the rim gets polished,
we are gonna clear coat it
which will put that protective barrier on it and after
that clear coat dries we are done.
The first step is we want to clean off the rim
so just soapy water, what ever you wanna use.
In this case I'm just using dish soap and water.
You wanna remove as much dirt as possible so you can have a clean rim to work on.
Now with this rim we have a lot of damage everywhere, we have damage all over the place.
Pretty much the whole entire rim has to be redone.
We are going make it go from looking like this...
to this.
So let's begin.
So there is a couple of ways you can go about removing this scratches in your rim.
My favorite way is using a rotary tool like this dremel with a flat disc.
This is a 120 grit flat disc.
It's a little to coarse, honestly you should use something around 200 grit but it will get the job done.
After the flat disc
we're gonna be using this sandpaper and make sure it's wet and dry sandpaper because we're gonna be wet-sanding.
It's also a good quality sandpaper because the better quality the sandpaper, the better the job's gonna come out, and the better finish you're gonna get.
With the sandpaper we're going to go for for 400 grit, to 600 grit, to 1000 grit, to 2000 grit.
And then we're gonna buff the rim
with some type of metal polish.
You want something that will buff aluminum
and both of these will work so let me show you how to remove the scratches from the rim.
I'm gonna show you how to remove this curb rash right here
and this process will work for any type of scratch on the rim.
Since we're going to be using a rotary tool, make sure you use your safety glasses, and maybe something even to protect your lungs
so you don't breathe this dust in.
With this rotary tool, I'm staying between 10 and 20 thousand RPM's
and the key is you want to move this tool back and forth.
You don't want it to dig into one area too long.
You can see I'm not just focusing on the spot that has damage, I'm focusing on
the whole area because you don't want to just dig into that one little spot it
will create a divot and look really bad.
You want to evenly sand this whole area with a little bit of focus on that
scratched area and you can see that damage just disappeared, it's not there anymore.
Now you're probably asking why didn't you remove the clear coat first.
Well the clear coat actually acts as a protectant so if you go a little bit too far
using your flat disk or using any sanding method that clear coat's going to
protect the aluminum finish because you don't need to sand everything and you
can see here that scratch is completely gone.
So now let's get rid of these scratches right here. Now we're going to use the
same strategy for these scratches keep that flat wheel moving around a large
area and don't focus on one spot
don't worry over time the scratches will be sanded away so be patient. If you
focus on one area you'll sand off too much aluminum and cause waves and that
won't look good.
So spread out the sanding over a large area. Notice how I sand passed the
scratches.
I'm even sanding areas with no scratches which are right next to the
deep scratches so it's a smooth transition.
I'll tell you one thing it's addicting to watch this curb rash disappear.
Now check this out! We removed all the scratches.
I need to work on this over here but the area we focused on and I showed you is
perfectly smooth.
This looks gorgeous. And that's all it takes, a little bit of flat wheel
keep it moving around to make sure you're not digging into one area
there's no waves there's no divots this is one completely smooth piece which is
exactly what you want.
Check out this before and after; here's the before with the curb rash, and here's
the after. Look at that difference!
That is awesome and we aren't done we're going to make it look even better than
this.
And once you get all the scratches out we can move on to the next step which is
stripping the clear coat.
So I'm going to do the rest of the rim and get everything to the same finish I
just showed you. The whole rim is covered in curb rash and scratches so
there's plenty for me to remove.
Alright, I am done getting all the scratches out.
This rim looks awesome there are no deep grooves or scratches anywhere on
the rim, all that curb rash is gone.
Look at that! Now this is looking great, the next step is going to be clean all
this aluminum powder off the rim and then we're going to go and remove all
the clear coat.
Honestly at this point, just get your hose and hose it down.
So this next step is my least favorite part, and it's using a chemical stripper
to strip the clear coat off the rim and the reason why it's my least favorite part
is because the stripper is not something you want to get on your skin and you
don't want to get it on the tires either.
And it's just that this is the most tedious part and have to make sure all the clear
coat comes off.
I put the stripper into a spray bottle and i'll rub it onto the clear coat with
a sponge brush but before any of that make sure you dry the rim completely so
there's no water which will dilute the chemical stripper.
Alright so we're just going to spray some of this on here and work it in.
You'll have to use a lot of that chemical stripper so don't be afraid to
really cover the rim in a thick coat and make sure you don't get any on the tire
and if you do clean it off right away after the whole rim is coated, sit back
and let the stripper do its thing.
You can see how it works to bubble up the clear coat and you can actually hear
it cracking and popping away. After about an hour the clear coat is all bubbled up
and now we're going to neutralize the chemical stripper
so we can hose off the rim. Alright so let's go neutralize this. As you wipe on
this neutralizing chemical hopefully your clear coat comes right off.
So now that this is neutralized i'm going to use an abrasive sponge to
remove any clear coat that hasn't come off yet.
If your clear coat doesn't come off easily, you might need to use another
coat of chemical stripper. For my rim about eighty percent is coming off with
this first coat of stripper. Now hose it down and let's see where we're at. In
this case after one dose of clear coat stripper and some rubbing with an
abrasive sponge you can see there's still some clear coat left on here so
we're going to have to go back with the abrasive sponge and the chemical
stripper until the clear coat is completely removed.
This is the most difficult part and it's super tedious but once you're done with
this, you're almost done.
I'm going to use another coat of chemical stripper and skip ahead to
where the clear coat is removed.
You don't need to see me do this process all over again. OK, so after the second
coat of stripper and then using this abrasive sponge again we have removed
all of the clear coat on this rim.
This is the most difficult part and realize that this doesn't get all the
clear coat off.
Which is why you have to go back in with either an abrasive sponge or even with
your flat wheel and get all that clear coat removed. It's very important to get
the clear coat completely removed. Now that the clear coat is off
let's move on to the sanding and polishing step. The flat disk that we
used is a hundred and twenty grit so we want to make sure we move up in grit
from there. Because we had that on a rotary tool, it made it pretty smooth
we could start
off with 400 grit sandpaper. We're going to be doing a wet sand which means that
you want to use water or in this case soap and water.
The soapy water is going to help the sandpaper and prevent the aluminum
pieces from sticking to the sand paper so you get a nice even sand.
Don't be afraid to use too much soapy water.
So with your 400 grit
if you see any imperfections you wanna make sure you get those imperfections
out now.
Don't worry about the light scratching that is caused by the sand paper because
that will slowly get buffed out but any deeper scratches that you can see you
want to get out now, so don't be afraid to push hard in the areas that you
really need to get those scratches out. When you sand you want to sand in random
circular motions
if possible, and just put a medium pressure on the sand paper.
You don't want to press so hard that you get exhausted and you don't want to
press too light where the sand paper isn't smoothing out the surface. So we
just used our 400 grit
now we're going to go to our 600 grit and with the 600 grit
you should just be smoothing down the 400 grit scratches, the 600 grit won't be
removing any of the deeper scratches.
So if you see any deeper ones go back with your 400 grit and get them out.
Now we're going to go from our 600 grit
to 1000 grit. Now as you use the thousand grit you should pretty much be seeing
the scratches disappear and you should start seeing the surface get a little
shiny. After our 1000 grit
we're going to go to our final grit and that's 2000. With the 2000 grit the
surface should feel really smooth and the sand paper should be sliding really
easily.
You'll also notice the room getting shiny and there should be no visible
scratches. Any scratches that you see now that you might have missed can easily be
fixed by going back to the 400 grit sandpaper and working the way back up to
the 2000 grit.
You only have to do that in the area you missed you don't have to do the whole
rim again.
Alright, the rim has been sanded down from 400 grit all the way up to 2000
grit and this is looking great.
Now what we want to do is we want to inspect the rim and what you're looking
for are any scratches that you need to correct before the final polish and
looking at this rim, well it looks really good.
No scratches are standing out so I think it's time to go polish it up and give it
a nice shine. Before you polish the rim
make sure the rim is completely dry. The rim is dry so let me show you what we're
going to use to polish.
I got this kit that comes with the foam polisher and it attaches to the drill
and it comes with polish so it makes the job that much easier.
What you're going to do is you can apply the polish directly to the cone and then
you're going to rub that polish onto the rim at a slow speed.
This prevents that polish from slinging off when you first use it and once you
work it into the rim at a slow speed we could crank it up and give this baby a
good polish. The cone is great because it fits into the hard-to-reach places and
trust me when I say it's worth the price because doing this by hand would take
forever and it wouldn't come out looking as good.
So take your time use the polish as needed and buff the entire surface of
the rim.
Once you polish the whole rim take a microfiber towel and buff the polish off
by hand.
Oh wow look at this shine! After polishing you can stop here or you
could put a clear coat over the metal to keep that shine without constantly
having to polish the rim. Next to get some new gloves on and grab some rubbing
alcohol
so we could degrease the rim and prep it for paint. Get the towel wet with the
alcohol and clean away.
Make sure you clean the entire rim and keep track of where you're cleaning so you
don't miss an area, there are a ton of spokes here.
OK, looking at our towel it's not getting dirty anymore and we touched every
surface on this rim.
So now we want to let it dry and that shouldn't take long because we used
alcohol which evaporates quickly. As it dries i want to show you a neat little
trick that I learned for masking off the tire because you don't want to get spray
paint on the tire. So the trick i learned a while back is to use note cards to mask
off the tire. Just slip a note card between the rim and the tire around the
whole edge of the rim.
This works faster and better than tape. Usually tape won't even stick to a tire
it just peels right off. And boom look at that, looks kind of cool.
Remember to tape off the valve stem as well. And that looks good.
You want to follow the instructions on your paint can. You want to use a clear
gloss that is UV resistant and non-yellowing. This is the same clear
coat I used in my headlight restoration video and it works great.
So follow the instructions and let's put down three even coats. Notice as I spray
I move around the whole wheel to get at different angles so I get complete
coverage. There are a ton of spokes on this rim so it's important to do that.
Also notice i start spraying on the cards and then spray across the rim and
stop spraying when i get to the cards on the other side.
I never start or stop spraying on the actual rim which helps keep the coats
even and prevents orange peel.
OK, so that was the first of three coats and each of the three coats is going to
be a medium thickness coat.
This isn't a light layer but also not a heavy layer that's going to run. You got
to find that sweet spot.
Now let it dry for about five minutes and then apply a second coat. Here is
coat two.
Excellent. Coat two is done and in five minutes we're going to finish with coat three.
And here is coat three. This is looking great.
Alright we're going to let the rim dry but before we let it dry
make sure you pull out these cards so they don't stick to the rim.
After a few hours the rim is dry to the touch. Let's install that Cadillac center
cap.
I'm also going to remove this tape from the valve stem. Wow, look at this.
The rim is finally done and it came out amazing.
The curb rash is gone there are no more scratches and it looks perfect.
My buddy is going to be real happy that his rim has been repaired and you could
easily do this at home for real cheap.
Now you know how to fix an aluminum rim and if you hit the curb or get your rim
scratched up yet stinks but don't worry you can fix it. Hopefully this video was
helpful. If it was remember to give the video a thumbs up.
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be a few videos. You can find the links to those videos in the description below.
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video.