[sickzuk1]

I was just looking at my rims the other day.. And realised how crap they look
Idk what they are called but they have a little coating of aluminium shiney stuff? Whatever you wanna call it.
And I tried to scratch the stuff off with my finger nail and the rims look like they have actually been eaten away by a bug or something? Like little trails of white everywhere?
So yeah.. When I scratched the rims a little bit the silvery paint just flaked off? Is there a special polish for this material? Or should I just scratch them all off and paint them black?

[alien]

standard sierra rims are powdercoated silver over steel... sounds to me like the paint is coming off with corrosion behind the paint.

can you take pics?

[sickzuk1]

Umm they aren't standard rims they are chrome?

[Joe]

Autosol

[alien]

chrome plating is no different to powdercoat... a small amount of corrosion behind the chrome will see it flaking off. rubbing it with anything is just going to remove the loosened plating.

[sickzuk1]

Soo...... What should I do? Polish or remove and paint?

[alien]

well given polish will likely chip away more chrome i'd leave them as-is as long as you can bear it. After that you have 2 options:

- Sandblast and powdercoat / spray paint
- Chemical clean and re-chrome

Personally i'd go powdercoat and choose a nice metallic silver (infact thats what i did do on my rims) - i matched the standard sierra silver.

[MacDaddy]

alien wrote:

chrome plating is no different to powdercoat... a small amount of corrosion behind the chrome will see it flaking off. rubbing it with anything is just going to remove the loosened plating.

X 2

Once the corrosion gets behind the chrome plating, its very hard to stop or fix... the best way is to strip them/sand blast them, then repaint/repowdercoat/rechrome them...

However, i had the same problem with the chrome rims i had on my now gone Vit... if you want something to slow down the corrosion a fair bit, what i found that helped alot, was a really good quality Rust Converter, i had one in a pump spray, it was water based, it converted the rust overnight, and then coated it, so it formed a water proof barrier... it will penetrate the corrosion under the chrome a bit, but the best way is to remove the loose stuff... i used a wire wheel in my drill to remove the loose stuff on 5 wheels, took me nearly all day, lol... but it worked, I had no new corrosion appear for the last 6 months i owned it... its not a permanent fix, but will help alot...

Edit : I meant Rust Converter, not Inhibitor...

[MrRocky]

autosol comes in a tube from auto shops and is what i use on my shiny rims
but only do 1 rim at a time as it can be hard to rub of if you leave it on for a while.