This DIY tutorial is for refinishing your Reatta wheels on a budget. This is not an easy job! If you value your time it would probably be cheaper to have the wheels refinished professionally.
STOP! You should read through this tutorial completely and determine if you have the skills, tools and time to do this job correctly. Be prepared to spend at least 6-8 hours per wheel. If you don't take the time needed to do this job correctly you will ruin your aluminum wheels!
Getting Started
- This photo shows the items that I used to refinish my wheels. Below is a list of what you will need.
- Electric drill
- Polishing pad for electric drill (black one with arbor for chucking up in drill)
- Hand held polishing pad (white one)
- Small electric sander (I purchased a cheap Black & Decker)
- Sanding pads for the electric sander (50, 80,1 20 and 240 grit)
- Wet or dry sandpaper (3M 400, 600 and 800 grit paper)
- Mothers Mag & Aluminum Polish 10oz size
- Paper towels
- Spray bottle for water
- Ear plugs and dust mask and safety glasses (not shown)
- Large, sturdy garbage can (optional)
- Stool (optional)
- This photo shows why a large, sturdy garbage can is helpful. It has many benefits. It is about the correct height for you to be able to sit on the stool and sand on the wheel for long periods of time comfortably and it will catch most of the dust and water that falls..
The garbage can is also handy for dropping in the dirty paper towels as you use them.
The garbage can I used was an old RubberMaid garbage can that I've had in my shop for years. It is 28" tall and 21" in diameter at the top.
Once you have all your tools and supplies collected you are ready to start refinishing a wheel. Remove the center cap and any wheel weights from your wheel.
I highly recommend that you cover up anything that you don't want to get sanding dust on, especially if you are working inside a garage.
Removing Old Finish
Put on your ear plugs, dust mask and safety glasses. Lets get started removing the finish on the wheel.
Stop here and think about what you are about to do. You should have already read completely through this tutorial and are confident that you have the skills and time to complete this job. If you don't you will ruin your wheel when you start this process!
Start with 50 grit sandpaper on your electric power sander. I recommend you start by sanding the area around the bead of the wheel first. Then the area around the hole for the center cap and then the spokes.
As you can see in the photo there is a thick clear-coat finish that must be removed as well as tool marks.
Take care that you don't damage the Reatta logo engraved in the spoke of your wheel.
Keep the sanding dust wiped away with a paper towel so you are able to see what you are doing. Excess dust will also prevent the sandpaper from cutting at maximum efficiency.
The routine I used was sand a few minutes, wipe away dust with a paper towel (don't blow), and inspect the finish. The finish will look really rough at this point and you may be wondering what you have gotten yourself into.
Repeat the process above using 80, 120 and 240 grit sandpaper. As you go through the process of sanding with progressively finer sandpaper continue wiping and inspecting your work. The way you know you have done that is when you change directions with the sander, the scratches that are left behind should go the same direction. Don't take shortcuts here and say, "well that's good enough". If you do you will have to come back and do this part over later on. Every coarse scratch you leave will show up when you apply the polishing compound.
After you finish dry sanding with the power sander and work your way down to the 240 grit sandpaper you will end up with a uniform finish that is relatively smooth.
Inspect your work very closely to be sure you have no large scratches left anywhere on the wheel.
Once you are satisfied with your work after dry sanding you should thoroughly wash the wheel and tire to remove all the dust and grit from the wheel and tire. This is a great time to clean and wash the inside of the wheel
Next you should clean your work area to remove any dust and coarse grit that might be on your wet or dry sandpaper and other items in the area. You cannot get the final finish you want if you contaminate the finer grit sandpaper with grit and dust from the coarse sandpaper.
Wet Sanding
Once you have your wheel cleaned up you're ready for the critical part of this project... the wet sanding. If you cut corners here you will be disappointed with the way your wheel will look when you start polishing with the compound.
Ask any good body shop man and he will tell you that preparation is the key to getting a good finish.
For sandpaper you should go to an auto parts store that caters to auto body shops.
I used 400, 600 and 800 grit sandpaper for wet sanding my wheels. That gave me a good quality, near chrome finish when the wheels were polished. If you want show car quality for your wheels you might need to go with some finer 1000 - 2000 grit sandpaper.
Wet sanding steps are similar to dry sanding with the exception of how you clean the surface that you are sanding. It is slower because you are doing it by hand.
Start off with 400 grit sandpaper dipped in the container of water. I like to add a couple of drops of dish detergent to the water. It helps keep the sanding dust and grit suspended on top of the surface of the wheel so you can spray it off using the squirt bottle filled with water.
SANDING TIPS:
- Keep the wheel wet at all times and dip the sandpaper in the container of water frequently to rinse it off.
- Change the water in the container often to keep it clean.
- If you need to stop sanding for a while wash your sandpaper off and lay it on a clean surface... Don't leave it in the bottom of the container where all the dust and grit has settled.
Again I recommend starting around the bead of the wheel, the hole in the center of the wheel and then the spokes. Sand for a few minutes and you will see the the dust and grit start to show up in the water on the wheel. Spray that dust off with the squirt bottle until it runs down into the garbage can. If you leave it on the wheel while you are sanding it will get embedded in your sandpaper and put unwanted scratches in the surface of the wheel. As you use the finer grits of sandpaper it will become more and more important to keep the surface of the wheel as clean as possible while you are sanding. You should stop sanding every now and then to wipe the surface clean with a paper towel to see if you are removing all the coarser scratches as you did when dry sanding. It's even more important to do that when wet sanding.
Continue wet sanding with the finer grits of sandpaper until the only scratches you have on the wheel are the ones left by the finest grit sandpaper you intend to use. If you have followed my instructions you should have a wheel with a finish that looks similar to the wheel shown in the photo on the left.
Here is the point where you need to inspect your work really well. Use a magnifying glass or whatever to try to make sure you have all the scratches out. Any you miss now are going to stick out like a sore thumb when you apply polishing compound. It might result in you having to go back and re sand some areas of the wheel if you are very particular.
If you are satisfied with your work it's time to give the wheel another thorough washing. You also need to clean up your work area again so no sanding grit or dust will be in the area where you will be polishing your wheel.
This would be a good time to take a break before you begin polishing the wheel.
Polishing
OK, so you have everything cleaned up and completely dry and you think you're ready to get the drill with the polishing pad attached to it out and go to polishing those wheels. Nope! Not yet. What you need to do now is a little test to see how well you did on sanding before going all out with the polishing operation.
For the test apply a thin coating of the aluminum polishing compound of your choice all over the wheel. I used Mother's Mag and Aluminum Polish and it did an absolutely great job. You should let the polish sit on the wheel for a few minutes and smear it around with your fingers. There must be a chemical reaction that takes place that removes tarnish from washing that is enhanced when you give it a little time to work.
Next take a clean buffing pad (I used the white one shown in the photo in the first tab) or a small terry cloth towel and apply a little polishing compound to it so it won't be dry when you begin buffing the wheel by hand. Go over the wheel completely in order to buff the wheel to a high gloss luster but don't let the wheel get completely dry like you would when removing wax from a car.
Wipe the wheel down with another clean cloth to remove all the polishing compound. Then buff again with another cloth to make the wheel shine as much as possible. Inspect the wheel closely for imperfections in the finish.
Look your wheels over carefully. If you have defects like the ones in the photo on the left you have two choices. You can choose to live with it that way or go back and wet sand them out. I chose to wet sand them again. I'm talking about the deeper scratches that go horizontally across. The tiny spider web like scratches will normally not be seen unless you are up extremely close to the wheel and you're looking for them.
Scratches like those shown in the photo are probably the result of me doing a poor job of wet sanding even though I thought I had done a really good job. That is the reason I have been emphasizing checking your work as you go. These scratches are hard to detect before you apply the polishing compound but it really brings them out.
If you wet sand the wheel again you must also wash it again thoroughly again or you will end up with grit in the compound contaminating your buffer when you are ready to polish again.
After you are satisfied with the way your wheel looks with hand polishing you are ready for the final polishing with the polishing pad on a drill. (see first photo) The pad I used is a foam pad made for polishing. It worked better than a cloth pad in that it held it's shape better when polishing the area near the bead of the wheel. Don't allow the buffing pad to touch the tire. If the pad does touch the tire, make sure it didn't get contaminated and is going to scratch the finish.
This part of the operation is pretty easy. Just apply a liberal amount the compound to the wheel and the foam buffing pad. Use the drill to buff the wheel with light pressure. Buff until the compound appears to be gone but don't buff the wheel with it dry. Dry buffing with the drill will actually dull the finish a little.
Wipe the surface of the wheel and see if you are satisfied with the way it looks. If you are satisfied you can remove any dried on compound from the painted surfaces by applying some of the polishing compound to a clean damp cloth and wiping it off. You can buff the wheel again if needed with the drill but keep in mind it will NOT remove any scratches like the ones in the photo above.
After you are done with the wheel it should look like the one in the photo on the left. Te only problem you are going to have is taking a photo of them. Every time I try to take a photo of the polished spokes all I get is a reflection of my camera. That's not a bad problem to have!
You should now have a set of shiny wheels that you can be proud of. Congratulations!
Center Caps
The photo on the left is of a Mustang wheel center cap used for an example only. If you are refinishing Reatta center caps you will probably need to remove the emblem in the center to use the power sander on the cap. I will leave it up to you to determine the best way to remove the emblem.
I used the same steps to sand the center caps that I used for the wheel. Dry sand with the power sander, wet sand by hand and then polish with the compound.
Obviously you can't put the center cap on the wheel to sand and polish it so you must hold it in your hand while you are work on it.
When you wet sand the center cap use a large pan to dip the center cap in to remove the dust and grit from it as you sand it.
I didn't use the drill and polishing pad to polish the center caps. I found it was easier to do all the buffing on the center caps with a hand held buffing pad.
