I have some more wheels I am about to work on, but they need to be stripped: some aluminum and some magnesium. Is it ok to use the same paint stripper on each type of metal?
I tried to be helpfull to this punk in his other thread and he PM'd me this thank you: " In other words... nowhere in your illustrious 30 year career have you restored magnesium or aluminum on a bike or car? - yah, thanks for nothing. " Actually I've restored a bunch of both and I tried to explain to your stupid ass that it is not a simple thing to do correctly and suggested that you go to another forum that deals more with this late model crap and they have threads already going covering this shit. So... Fuck you, Fuck your wheels and Fuck your piece of shit S-10
my guess is we'll be seeing his wheels on egay as restored for $400 a pr. soon, Yes, I do restore wheels about 250 of them over the years, stripper gets into the pores of alum , plan on painting/ powder coating as soon as they are cleaned up or you will get the white dust stuff (corrosion)FAST, magnesium has worse corrosion problems than alum.,both alum and mag really, need to be bead blasted , magnsm BURNS, so glass beads are in order per Roots reply
[ QUOTE ] my guess is we'll be seeing his wheels on egay as restored for $400 a pr. soon [/ QUOTE ] whose wheels? - my wheels ? - Anyways, How soon is soon when it comes to sealing/clear coating after it has been glass blasted? Can I drop one wheel off before class/work (8am), pick it up on way home (6pm)and scuff or polish it and then coat? Or will that oxidation set in before I even pick it up? The shop wants $300 to do it all on the set of 4: they said strip (maybe they would have glass-blasted?) polish and clearcoat. Would using a wire wheel to remove paint from aluminum wheels be totally retarted? It would save me some more $$
all a wire wheel will do is pull off the loose stuff and semi polish the alum + paint still there, within a day or so is soon enough.oxidation is mainly from strippers, but time and pollution play as well, don't touch any area you plan to paint w your bare hands , blow off the entire wheel w DRY air to remove dust,use a good epoxy clear , this may take some experimenting as alot of spray bombs yellow after a short time or even right away, I powder coat clear and even that has some tint to it.Depending on what kind of wheel you have, it may be better to leave em alone as some are more valuble w "patina" intact.another thing DON"T BLAST THE WHOLE DANG wheel, just the center or painted areas,seen too many wheels ruined by blasting the whole thing , ya better have a lot of pateince(?) to fix em, once ruined that way,takes forever to polish out the sand/bead scars by hand.
Garage Magazine has a adverisement for some polish for magnesium in the new issue..check that out! Dirty
The guy("Doc" Parsons) who owns and built the car posted here had various problems restoring the Halibrand Mag. wheels on this roadster. He wound up powder coating, then painting them in order to keep them from seeping air. Did I mention, Doc drives this car? By the way, he started collecting parts for this car in 1958.
Don't fool around!! Burn it off, it's only mag! As root said you can't polish pure mag. It oxidizes. Mag alloys, yes, but they tend to be much duller than aluminum and have to be sealed immediately. If they get too hot in polishing they'll get black smutty patches and pores will open up all over the place. $300 to polish a full set of mag /allos is real cheap. I charge from $150 up to refinish a wheel. $300 on a set buys no more than a light buffing. Do they know what they're doing?
They probably know what they are charging me for. - But as far as what I am paying for, who knows. I don't think it wise to mess with the mag wheels for now. Thanks for all the tips. Maybe I will try various things on one of the aluminum "test" wheels instead. If push comes to shove I will get it bead-blasted.
polisher, I have an old set of Ansen "Sprint" wheels. (knock off type) But I'll be darned if I can tell if they are aluminum or magnesium. How can I find out without damaging the wheel(s)?? They seem to be fairly light, but I don't have another set to compare them to. (alum vs mag) The coating on them is peeling and has yellowed (I think they are old enough to be "pre powder coating" days) and might have been done with some kind of clear coat. I have hesitated to try and "bring them back to life" for the same reasons as being stated in this thread.
true magnesium throws sparks like a kids sparkler when you touch it w a grinder, do it in a out of sight spot like inside the rim.alum is much lighter when cleaned w mag wheel cleaner(but not a good idea,same reason as stripper)
Mag will strip normally with good old fashioned aircraft stripper. If you buff it keep speeds down and mag cool as pores open up in a heartbeat. Most "Mags" are mag alloy and only contain around 10-15% mag. They polish pretty well and have few pores. Pure mags have light pores all through them and polish a little darker and greyer than aluminum. The key is to finish with a quality waxed hand polish. pH of the polish must be neutral or mag will really grey pretty damned quick.If somebody tells me how to post a picture I'll put up a lambo wheel. That's a high content mag alloycenter on an aluminum outer. That'll show you the difference, and what can be done with decent mag alloy. (Note decent, not good.) Pure mag is much more porous, far more volatile ( dust ignites very easily ) and practically un polishable. We won't do it.
If I made that sound confusing, in my first reference to pure mags, I meant high mag content alloys. This is alloy that contains enough aluminum to feel smooth to the touch and looks pore free until it is polished ( then the little bitches appear all over the place, but they are tolerable.) Pure mag is just full of pores and looks like cast iron, and is very light. I've never seen pure mag that was investment cast, that's not to say it's not out there. What I've seen has always been sand cast and very porous. I don't know the mag content of the Lambo wheels but it's pretty high.Polishable, but doesn't mirror like aluminum. Pores are in clusters. We got our best results with very dry abrasives. Regular abrasives ran too hot because of the grease, and brought out pores in rashes. Lower speeds helped, but the drier compounds did much better.
now Thats good info from a pro, I'm a home wheel guy so theres some there i did'ny know thanks polisher , send me the pic I'll post it or you can reduce its size to no more than 4" wide, save it then hit the "I want to ADD A PIC OR FILE" AREA ON THE POSTING "you pic area will come up choose your pic and double click , then hit send. Do you guys do wheel redrilling?I have 2 pr I need bolt circles changed on.
I polish my spindle mount 5 spokes using just the most basic tools and a lot of elbow gease. It takes a lot of time, but they come out looking pretty good. How do you keep them looking good? One humid weekend, even in a closed garage, and they go from damn nice to grey primer. You mentioned a ph balanced wax. Is the ph listed on the container? Any brand names you've had exceptional luck with?
[ QUOTE ] Pure mag is just full of pores and looks like cast iron, and is very light. I've never seen pure mag that was investment cast, that's not to say it's not out there. What I've seen has always been sand cast and very porous. [/ QUOTE ] polisher, the wheels I have appear to be sand cast and any area that the coating (clear coat ?) has peeled off of is a very dark color. (even black in some areas) I'm not thinking of trying to get a high luster, just an even color. So .. would light glass beading clean them up. I don't mind the dark "cast iron" look. Then should I apply any kind of "sealer?"
Polisher: This might help you post pictures: http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=633264&page=&view=&sb=5&o=&fpart=all&vc=1 If you need more help you can private message me. Thanks for all the polishing help!
I was going to put up the pictures but they are too big so I'll have my webmaster load them up to the gallery on my website, then I should be able to get them on the site. If you want to email me direct I can send you pictures of the wheels direct and you can clearly see the pores that you are up against with high content mag alloys. Most mag alloys are much lower in content and polish well. Pure mag is a bitch.
Hi Dave, if you send me an email, I'll send you pictures of the lambo wheels, they are mag alloy inner and probably a 6000 series aluminum outer rim. You can see the pores in the inner really well. We finished them with Showmans Blend, which still makes them look damned good. it's available through my website. I can't refer anything else, cos I don't use anything else. My polishes are endorsed by all the big british museums, so I figure they are good enough for me too. But that doesn't mean there aren't comparible products out there. It's a matter of read the labels and try them out. If you like them, great. Basically the nearer a pH is to 7 the more neutral it is, between 5 and 8 being classed as neutral. Most polishes have a pH from 8 to 10, and a few have a pH of around 4 to 5, very few get near 7. My automotive blends have a pH of 6.8 or 6.9 depending on tempurature, my antique polishes are around 7.3, some I'm pretty damned close to perfection. My Automotive polishes are just a tad on acid side as biggest problem for vehicles is air and road borne salt.
Difficult to tell what you've got with out seeing them. Black oxidisation suggests mag content. Mag generally goes to a black smut when exposed to acids or salts. Aluminum tends to stay dull gray and just grow pits with neglect. Plated aluminum tends to suffer worse, especially trivalent chrome and northeastern road salt. A lot of green chrome salt gathers once the chrome breaks down and attacks aluminum hard. Modern BMW and Jaguar wheels suffer from it terribly, as do most (not all) aftermarket brands.
tell me about it, ever see a Crager SS after a MN winter? only one reason the smart ones don't run em here.even sitting in a garage ,off road during the winter they pit + peel
Zinc by the way, found in some of the cheaper wheels develops a white salt which develops massive pits under it. Any kind of alloy or chrome should really be removed from daily riders in winter unless either you really stay on top of it, or you live in the sundrenched, cold beer drinking, bikini loving south. And I'm in Maine, my damned pilgrim forefathers either couldn't read a compass, were just plain dumb, or both. Still, with a bit more global warming.... Up with aerosols and green house gases, that's what I say. Fire up your ENGINES and let'em RUN!!
Hi, I'm new to this board and would like to restore my mag/aluminum wheels. Does anyone know the best method to strip, clearcoat, ect., I do not want them shiney afterwards...would like them as close to OEM as possible. I polished my manifold and aluminum valve covers and I realize the time/work effort as those took me four days of my own labor to do. Thanks in advance for any advice. Fred
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