so my wheels are solid black. Ive been thinking about stripping and polishing the lips like ive seen on a bunch of bikes on here..did the wheels come like this or have the people with their wheels like this had to do it themselves?
if you've done it, what method did you use? what do you think the easiest method is or would be?

thanks

 

Go to autozone and buy you a can of "aircraft paint stripper" ... that will strip pain off of anything ... be really careful with it ... I stripped the lips of the rims on my old 919 with it .... works great ...

 

aircraft stripper will remove the paint but that's only 1/3 of the work

 

so you wouldnt be able to just start polishing after the stripper?

and im guessing that none of the wheels came like this? each person has polished the wheels lips themselves?

 

yep, everyone had done it themselves.

you clean the paint off with stripper, sand it down with large grit then go down to higher and higher till you cant see scratches, once completed you'll need to get some rubbing compound and rub the area you want shiny.

 

The lips are pretty darn shiny after u strip them the issue is there are lines from the machining process. Also im not quite sure how taping the centers off will work with the stripper its pretty narly stuff. U cantlet it sit on alumininum too long otherwise it can eat into it. The dont use "aircraft" stripper on planes because of the corrosiveness, it would eat out the rivets on a plane. It just works really fast. But thats my 2 cents, use can use a 3" pad on an air tool to clean up the lips, use them on cylinder heads to clean off gasket material and what not.

 

well theres an edge. so i dont think you would have to tape anything really, just be mindful of what your doing. i dont know about using power rotary tools for this, i thought a wire wheel would be pretty gentle, and used it for about a 1/4 section of my front wheel. it dug into the metal pretty bad. all kinds of pits and little craters. i cant imagine it was like that under the paint..but now ive been sanding, and sanding......... and sanding.i think ANY kind of stripper would definitely be better than this..i really wish i had posted this before i did that...lol

 

Dude ..... that really sucks to hear :\ ...

 

You can fix those pits, sand it down my hand. Start with 200 grit sandpaper, even out the craters, once even go up to 400, 800,1200,1500 slowly removing the rash from the sand paper. Once done use some rubbing compound like mothers.

You'll also need to clearcoat it or some kind of protection, otherwise you'll get surface rust

 

yea, i spent about an hour and a half going at it with 80!! i got probably a 3 inch section smooth... just ended up t-ing me off and left me with sore hands. lol
so i just threw some filler primer at it, sanded that and slapped new paint on it. when i get some money and track down another wheel, ill probably give it a go then, starting with paint stripper of course!! the reason i started with the front wheel, was if it didnt work out, it wouldnt really bother me because its screwed anyways. theres a pretty good bend in the right lip. so my thinking was, if it works, ill get the lip fixed. and if not, i already planned on getting a new wheel...

so theres new black paint on it for now, and ill ride it as it is until i have money and can track down another wheel...(recently quit my job to go back to school, and now im waiting on my money from the post 911 gi bill...so who knows when ill be getting that!)