Need help: Refinishing M-Parallels

[stargazer_61]

Nice job on that lip!

[BigKriss]

I love the look of the wheel how you have refinished it.

I know mine are only standard 15" basketweaves style, but same theory..

The paint was very thin on mine - a good hard scrub would take it down to primer in places, so I decided to go for te polished lip & dark centres..

Started with Nitromors (paint stripper), got all the paint & primer off the lips.. unfortunately the rims are a 'crinkle' finish under the paint, so out with the 120 grit paper to smooth them down.. This was the hardest part of the whole process - more just time consuming than real hard, but it'l give your arms a good workout!
Once all the 'crinkle' was gone, I used 400 grit wet, to remove the harsh sandpaper scratches.
After the 400 grit, I used a Brillo pad (soapy fine wire wool, for doing crusty pots n pans, dunno if you yanks have them or not!).
The finish you see in the pic is straight from the brillo pad (ok, so I masked & sprayed the centres too in dark grey metallic), it's pretty shiny & scratch free but using some polishing compound on them willo be the finishing shine I think, just to take out the final very fine scratches..

Each wheel took me around 5 hours start to finish (so far), including waiting for the paint stripper to do its stuff..



Hope this helps!

[JerseySi]

Cheers!
It's not finished yet - there's still the very outside edge to clean up (can see the paint around the top of the wheel still), and a couple of areas are less shiny than others...
Oh, and currently that's had no polishing whatsoever - when I get a couple of hours spare next, I'll be getting keen on them with rubbing compound/polish/etc to give them a proper shine, then maybe shoot some laquer over the top to protect it

[clevertd]

Hmm, hopefully some of these tips will help with my refinishing of Style 32's (mostly the sanding). The primer underneath the paint is about a bitch to get off and I'm starting to get tired of the paint stripper burning my skin. Anyone have any more tips?

[JerseySi]

Cheers Kriss!
TO be honest I'm not sure - did them black first, was too dark.. dark grey looks alright, but can't help thinking I want them lighter grey :lol:

and clevertd - wear rubber gloves!!

I wore a long sleeved t-shirt, and 2 rubber gloves per hand when I was doing mine (the gloves I had were the thin latex style ones, so I doubled up - turns out I didn't need to, but better safe than sorry!)

The first set of wheels I polished were the old metric basketweaves, paint stripper didn't do a thing except make a mess, so I had to sand them all..
These wheels, the paint almost fell off!
Nitromors on - dab it on, very thick, rather than brushing it on.. This was after a couple of mins, you can see paint starting to lift at the edge..
Leave it 20 mins & remove with a scraper/wire wool... You'll probably need a second application to get it all..

[ILoveMPower]

Damn thanks for the tips guys, guess I need some pretty serious stripper for a polished lip.