Snow day = Shop day
Since I'm going to run street tires full time this summer, I had to find a way to get my billet wheels looking nice again and more importantly keep them looking that way.
First up, cleaning them up and polishing them. Brake N Parts cleaner on a rag was used to clean the back sides of them up of grease, gear oil and brake fluid then Mother's billet polish was used on the fronts. I've found the best way to do this job is to get a nitrile glove, dip a finger in the polish and work the polish onto the rim with the glove. This lets you control the amount of polish (little goes a LONG way) and also makes it easier to work the polish into all of the nooks and crannies.
I then take a Mother's Polish cone on an electric drill and work the polish back off the rim. This works pretty good to get the majority of the spots and blemishes off on the first go around. Usually still have some spots left though and I take my glove and work polish back into the areas missed. This makes it a bit easier to watch the spots work out as you work the polish in. I finish it off with a microfiber towel polishing all of the nooks and crannies.
Here's one of the rear rims polished out...
And here is one of the new rims to compare it too...
I realized that my cell phone takes terrible pictures of shiny billet aluminum...but it was snowing too damn hard to go back into the house to get the good camera so this is all we have for now.
I even did the back sides of all of the rims too...
Mother's billet polish applied
and taken back off...
The next step is a sealant to help keep them nice looking under daily driving duties and after races. I've ordered some of this stuff up and will be applying it to all 6 rims later this week.
http://www.shineseal.com/products.htm
It used to be called Zoop Seal but they have reformulated it and now call it Shine seal. It works a bit like Sharkhide, another aluminum sealant that I have used to seal the pontoons on my boat. It seals the porous aluminum surfaces and puts a protective coating on it to keep the aluminum from oxidizing, makes brake dust just blow off and resists water spots making clean up super easy.
There is a cleaner, sealer, slick finish and bright shine metal polish in the kit. They say the sealer goes on kind of like rain-X. Bit like a solvent applied best with a new cloth diaper, let it haze up...then buff it off with a microfiber towel. Once the metal polish is used, the aluminum is supposed to shine as good as if not better than freshly polished billet with no sealant on it. We'll see...
I can't drive it regularly with them the way they were though...this I know. Hopefully this relieves some of the hassle involved with daily driving billet rims. If this doesn't work...they are getting plasti-dipped...