corroded wheels

  • Thread starter Thread starter george farquharson
  • Start date Start date
G

george farquharson

I've got an 86 760 Turbo wagon that's in good shape but the alloy wheels are
corroded and discolored. Anyone have a treatment for the wheel metal to
clean them up; or maybe I should paint them.

Cheers....George
Vancouver Island
 
Best bet is sandblast and re-paint, or powder coat. Most tire shops have a
contact where they send wheels for this job. If you have access to a sand
blaster, you can do it yourself. Search the web for "wheel refinishing" or
something like that. Tons of info out there. Good luck.

RS
 
Rusty said:
Best bet is sandblast and re-paint, or powder coat. Most tire shops have a
contact where they send wheels for this job. If you have access to a sand
blaster, you can do it yourself. Search the web for "wheel refinishing" or
something like that. Tons of info out there. Good luck.

RS
Click to expand...

I think with alloy wheels, sand is too aggressive. There are other
things to blast them with. But you can do these wheels by hand...

The problem with the finish Volvo used on some wheels up to 1987 is only
with the clear coat where it was applied to bare alloy. The whole wheel
was painted gray, then the top surface has the paint machined off, then
the whole thing is clear coated. Where the clear coat is on the bare
metal, the coating fails, and corrosion gets under. Because it's only
the top surface, hand scraping and sanding is not overly difficult. If
you've got more time than money, you can clean this upper surface, and
then paint. I got a very nice set of 10 spoke wheels from an early 760
for my '76 245 this way, back when I was young and broke.

--
Mike F.
Thornhill (near Toronto), Ont.

Replace tt with t (twice!) and remove parentheses to email me directly.
(But I check the newsgroup more often than this email address.)
 
I've got an 86 760 Turbo wagon that's in good shape but the alloy wheels are
corroded and discolored. Anyone have a treatment for the wheel metal to
clean them up; or maybe I should paint them.
Click to expand...

A suggestion was made by an earlier poster to sand-blast the wheels.
Don't do this with alloy wheels -- they pit really easily.

There's a product I've used on cars that have been prepared for sale,
called Flitz. It takes about 10 - 20 minutes to do a wheel. Here's
the website that you can read more about it, and decide for yourself.
<http://www.flitz.com>

The two things that you want are:
a) Flitz liquid metal polish, and
b) Flitz polishing ball (this hooks up to your drill)

Beverly
 
I've tried sandblasting aluminum items before, the media I use is a white
sand made of crushed glass, the problem is aluminum is so soft that it sands
away faster than most paints, especially powder coating. A light
sandblasting will take off oxidation and very loose flakey coatings but you
won't remove the powder coat that way without damaging the wheel.
 
James said:
I've tried sandblasting aluminum items before, the media I use is a white
sand made of crushed glass, the problem is aluminum is so soft that it sands
away faster than most paints, especially powder coating. A light
sandblasting will take off oxidation and very loose flakey coatings but you
won't remove the powder coat that way without damaging the wheel.
Click to expand...

I suppose we're just quibbling over semantics now, I'd call that glass
blasting. I've also seen blasting with walnut shells and various kinds
of plastic beads. And whatever you're blasting at aluminum wheels, if
you stay too long in one spot, then you can have a problem, so
experience is key.

--
Mike F.
Thornhill (near Toronto), Ont.

Replace tt with t (twice!) and remove parentheses to email me directly.
(But I check the newsgroup more often than this email address.)
 
I used Flitz with a fair anount of success (much, much rubbing!) on
my old 760T, it helped a bit but the clear coat was gone, so it was
only a temporary fix.

Had pretty good success with Eagle One on my 89 780 wheels, the clear
coat must have been in good shape on this one, since they really came
out nice, and have lasted so far for about 6 months in the HOT Florida
sun, tho they could now probably use another treatment.


Good luck, I know this is a frustrating problem.
 
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