TCS OEM Alloy wheels refinnish

[rjbaren]

I did not want to hijack Dilkris's wheel thread so I began this one.

I sent my wheels out last week to be chemically stripped.  They then had to be sand blasted and now have a frosty finish.  They are very clean but I stopped there because I am not sure how to proceed.  The wheel guy only does one color powder coating and I don't know if the outer rim will be able to be polished after the blasting.  He says they can be polished but whoever will be polishing them won't be happy doing it after the sand blasting.
Another member on this forum has his wheels stripped with no color and they look pretty good.  I have a can of Shark Hide which is a wipe on clear coating that I haven't tried yet.  I think it might look OK because the sandblasted finish is very uniform.  Since I have a set of copy Minilights aftermarket wheels from John Brown wheels, I have time to decide what to do with the OEM Alloys.
What have others done to restore their wheels? 

[Pfreen]

I had my wheels refurbished in South Florida by a company who has the Leno wheel lathe.  https://www.lencoholdings.com/.  Check out the video.  The company that did it is Wheel Repair Specialists in Deerfield beach and the owner invented the machine.
They sandblast, powder coat grey black, machine the aluminum and then clear coat The whole wheel.
I think it as about $50 per wheel.  I can't remember exactly.  That was in 2018.
They turned out great.

[Lou Drozdowski]

Old school, sanding by hand.

The original alloys were in decent shape to start with, started with medium grit and finished up with crocus cloth. A couple of rattle cans of "hammer finish" black and metal polish.

Materials...$10.00  Paint...$15.00  sweat equity...Priceless!

[Grumblebuns]

I went the vapor blasting route. The finish comes out a smooth satin silver texture. My plan is to polish up the spokes and edges and leave the rest of the wheel as is. Final touch will be a clear spray over everything. The guy doing the job works out of his garage and took a couple of months to do the job due to numerous equipment issues but the the final result was excellent.

[jlmullen2]

I also did mine by hand, chemical paint stripper followed by lots of hand work with a Dremel to remove all the paint. Started with medium grit sandpaper on the outer rim and spokes working to finer grit then 3 step polishing. The hardest part was masking the spokes and rim prior to painting. I painted the inner areas with a charcoal grey metallic which is similar to the stock color. I wish I would have painted the backside black before mounting the tires. I was going for a stock look.
Larry

[rjbaren]

Thank you guys.  My wheels look like Grumblebuns at this point.  I have done the sandpaper to polish route before but not with a painted wheel.  My understanding is to polish first, then mask, and finally paint. 
 I also used a product called Shark Hide.  It is like a clear coat but you wipe it on with a rag.  It isn't supposed to yellow and you don't have to strip it off, just wipe on another coat whenever it appears to need it.  I used it on some other wheels but I never installed them. They still look great after two years but they have never had tires mounted or been out of the house yet either.  A friend of mine clear coated his wheels and put them in a shed for one winter and they turned kind of brown and look pretty awful.  Now he has to strip them and start over.  I am hoping Shark Hide will alleviate those problems.

[pboedker]

Old school, sanding by hand.

The original alloys were in decent shape to start with, started with medium grit and finished up with crocus cloth. A couple of rattle cans of "hammer finish" black and metal polish.

Materials...$10.00  Paint...$15.00  sweat equity...Priceless!

I'm in this camp too. Sort of. Have almost done it twice now.    + = 

First time I did it was when I sanded the blank parts, because the original lacquer was cracked and dirty underneath. The result was very nice and easy to keep nice with only an occasional metal polish. It was a hard job, I used a dremel and a drill with various sizes of 'rotating grit paper flaps' and finished it by hand and very fine grit paper. But the result was very nice.

After some years, the dark parts of the wheels were getting very bad and I also needed new tires. So the wheels were blasted and plastic coated. I chose a sort of gun metal color in the hope that it would make the spokes stand out while at the same time have the wheel appear dark, sort of like some modern wheels do. Well it did, but only at some angles and light conditions. Some times it just looked very dull and almost like a simple grey wheel.

So, I polished the rims like original and like the last time I did id, and have had this condition for a couple years now. It adds some contrast between wheel and tire just like a chrome ring does. I'm semi-happy with the looks of this. The attached photo shows the polished rim and the dull grey wheel.

I now only need to find the time and initiative to polish the spokes, and then I think it will look really great again.