Restoring the luster on polished wheels

[hacker-pschorr]

I have a set of aluminum wheels that were professional polished 20+ years ago. As expected there is a slight "haze" on them now, impossible to make better by hand. These have been in storage for any years, finally getting around to using them. My plan was to have them anodized back to a factory (close) color and not have to worry about trying to care for polished surfaces.

I decided to give cleaning them up a try anyway, with an old tub of Hot Rims Metal Polish & Mother Mag & aluminum Polish on hand, I grabbed my buffer, an orange pad and went to down on the largest flat surface of these wheels.

Much to my surprise, the shine came back quite easily.....so I decided to give this a try. The edges of the wheels destroyed the yellow pad, and the black 3M pad I tried. They worked, but obviously not ideal for these wheels.

So I ordered:
1. Hot Rims Metal Polish
2. Metal Finishing Polish
3. Metal Medium-Cut Polish
4. These things: https://www.amazon.com/Anytime-Tools...dp/B0053H9TGG/

I ordered all these without doing any research, I was in a hurry to get things shipped for arrival late this week so I could have them done for the weekend.

Where does NXT Metal Polish fit in here? If it's something I need I know that is available locally.

Hindsight I'm not sure I need the medium-cut polish, not sure why I ordered it.

If I'm understanding things correctly, Hot Rims should be all I need, followed by Metal Finishing Polish then any kind of wax?

If there are stubborn areas, try the Medium-Cut, but honestly I don't see that being necessary.

Thoughts / suggestions?

[hacker-pschorr]

Re: Restoring the luster on polished wheels

I think they turned out rather well. I only used the medium cut inside the lug holes.


I did the outer lips with the tires off, planned to do the whole job without the rubber mounted but I had to get them installed for this weekend.