Hello my name is John and I'm a dumbass. I made the mistake of using an SOS pad on my wheels to clean them. Luckily they are stock wheels and not worth anything, but man.... they got scratched up. Very very light scratches... you can't even feel it with your fingertip. So now 3 out of 4 of my allows are no longer shiney, but dull and scratched... Is there anything I can do to remove the scratches? Some light rubbing compund maybe? Any suggestions are appreciated. Thanks a lot guys.

 

thats great. dumbass anonymous. first of all.. i had a few questions before i start giving you some advice. why did you keep on cleaning your wheels if you started to scratch up the first one? you said you ruined 3 of your 4 wheels.. how does one not notice what he's doing...

well anyways. there is hope. unfortunately, its gonna be a lot of work though. what you most likely did was, sanded through the clear coat, and then started to scratch the aluminum alloy of the wheels.

what you need to do now is take out the scratches. this means that you are going to have to sand down all of the scratches with a coarse grit sandpaper, and then go over them with a finer paper. keep jumping to finer papers to take out as many of the deep scratches as you can. after the sandpapers, move to compounds. like the papers, you want to use coarse compound at first and move to finer pastes. when you are happy with the finish, spray a layer of clear and you are set.

if you work hard enough at it, you can give your wheels a chrome like finish.

good luck.

walka

 

John... pleeeezzzee tell me you're not THAT much of a DUMB@$$, and you're joking! 3 out of 4???

(now that I've got THAT out of my system...) Follow walka's advice.

 

lol man I didn't notice because the wheel was wet and there was soap from the SOS pad on it. When wet you can't really see the scratches... Not to mention the soap all over. And it didn't help that I did this as the sun was going down. But um yeah... that sounds like a lot of work. The thing is though, that the scratches are only on the front of the alloys meaning.... not in those grooves(or at least I can't see no scratches in the grooves). They are only on the flat front part. Hell I scrubbed the center cap too and that didn't get scratched at all. Only the flat part on the alloys. And you mentioned deep scratches... They are not deep at all like I said you can't even feel them with your finger.

What about wheel paint? What is involved in that process? Lots of sanding or can you just paint right over(doubtful)? I guess I'll go search.

But thanks a lot for the help guys.

EDIT - I can't even do a search. Search has been disabled by administrator???

 

Even though the scratches aren't as deep as you hinted at in the original post, I'd still probably go over those that ARE there with some light-grit sandpaper, followed by rubbing compound, like walka said. Then, if you want to go over it with wheel paint or a clear coat, it won't end up looking like SugarHoneyIcedTea when all is said and done.

 

http://forums.maxima.org/showthread....hreadid=207393

check it out man

walka

 

That looks awesome man I think I would screw up the wheels more than they are now if I tried that

Using one of those vibrating square shaped sanding tools wouldn't work would it? And wheel paint requires sanding right?

 

If you only used steel wool, most likely it didn't go through the clearcoat- unless it's already peeling off like most of ours are.

first, try going over the nasty ones with a power buffer and some rubbing compound. you should be able to take most of the scratches out with that.

don't even think about trying to use one of those orbital square sheet sanders on this stuff. WAAAAY wrong tool to use here. you'll do more damage than good.