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Rim treatment

2K views 4 replies 2 participants last post by  Gundarak 
#1 ·
I just recently bought 4 15x8 lds 442 rally rims that im going to be putting some Firehawk Indy 500 tires on... but anyways some of these are in mild shape.. the dirt is easy enough to get off, minor rust is a scrape and a wire brush away, and for surface cleaning i know to use an old trick of a fine fine sos pad... but there is one tire that has alot of rust.. i was thinking of sand blasting the damn thing.. is this a good idea??? if it is, what type of beads should i use and such.. after, i plan to get these re-chromed..

there are also some dings here and there only on the edge of the rims, not even close to the center, or the middle, right on the edge.. would it hurt to file these down or rebang them back a little?? thanks for the advice
 
#2 ·
I was reading some articles that came up in a search for "rims" ... all i basically found were how to polish chrome rims.. one was giving hints on how to remove rust from the chrome rims.. where the wheel sits on 2 of the rims has quite a bit of rust, so right now im scraping away and using a wire brush for the rust... for the chrome side, the part that you want to show off, im leaving alone right now, i was told to use fine steel wool, the round sos pad with the soap already in it..

do you guys have any suggestions on how i should go about removing all this rust from both spots, and cleaning methods to remove all the dirt / grease / oil that might be on these tires... i want to get these clean enough to remove all the rust and perhaps repolish these..

im thinking of sanblasting, seems to be a good alternative to removing all the rust and just re-chroming them

please any help is awesome
 
#3 ·
ok i have decided that the best option right now for me is to repolish these rims after i am done cleaning them and getting all the rust off.. most of the rust on the rims are in where the tire sits.. guessing this happened because the tires were prolly not filled with alot of air and moisture got in there.. I bought myself a drill bit that is taking off almost all of the rust completely, and this is turning out easier than i thought.. so as of right now i only have a few more questions

on one of the rims, the rust was able to make pits in where the tire will sit.. i was thinking of grinding all the rust down as best as i can, using some rust remover, then last using rust converter. my question is, after using the rust converter, will that be good enough to hold back that rust when i put the new tires on? or should i use an epoxy over the rust converter then put the tires on..

another question of mine is there are small dings on the edges of some of the rims.. is there a way to get these dings out? i am told no.. but i'd like to.... i'll see if i can take some pictures to post so you know what they look like... thanks again guys
 
#4 ·
I had the same rust pitted tire bead problem you have a couple years ago. It was on my lawn tractor. What I did was wire brushed the loose rust off, hit it with some phospho, then I coated the inside of the wheels with cold galvanizing compound. Last summer One of them got a hole in it, so I decided to put a tube in it. When I took the tire off of the wheel, the galvanizing compound was still there, and no new rust had formed.
I think it would probably work on a car tire too.
 
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