What are you using for forged polished wheels?

i am purchasing a set of forged aluminum ccw rims for my 2006 gto.

from what i understand the aluminum oxidizes and gets dirty easily, so one needs to have polish to maintain it.

the only polish ive ever used was mother billet aluminum polish which i used on my aluminum tips.
it worked great!
but i was wondering if there was anything non otc that would clean the wheels easier and produce a better luster.

i did seal my wheels with chemical guys jet seal 109 and it worked great for keeping break dust off of the stock painted wheels.
i was wondering if i could seal the ccw's with the jet seal?

they are including a bottle of rejex sealant any one have experience with rejex?

 

you can use jetseal if you want, my advice is to order some AutoGlym Custom Wheel cleaner for them to keep them clean and shiny. you can also try Blackfire all metal sealant as well.

 

I would to see pics of your goat with ccw wheels ... my all-time favorite rims!!

 

Which model CCWs?

If you have any luck with this, please do post a follow up and let us know. I have a set of polished CCW Classics and have just about given up. They've never looked like they did when they were new. I can get them to look a lot better, but can't seem to make them look perfect. I use various metal polishes (Mother's and Wenol most recently) with sacrificial microfiber towels.

For the barrels of mine (which aren't polished), P21S polishing soap works well.

I gave up on sealing them. I tried Swissvax Autobahn and Jetseal. Neither lasted particularly well, but the Swissvax stuff didn't last well at all. Majestic Solutions' Enviro-Shield wasn't much better.

The next thing I might try is using the rotary on them, along with several small, sacrificial finishing pads. I'm not sure what else to do. I find polishing them by hand very difficult, even painful. At least with the Classics, there are a lot of "sharp" 90 degree angles, and of course there are ARP fasteners all around the outermost portion of them. I'm constantly banging my fingers into all of that stuff, and it hurts.

They're beautiful wheels, but I don't think I'll ever own bare aluminum ones again. I've considered sending them back to CCW to have them repolished and clear anodized, if possible.

 

i have had alot of luck using all brite metal polish followed by autoglym metal polish. when your done it almost looks chrome

 

i will receive them next week.

and i plan on hitting them with some polish and then seal them and put them back into the box until spring.

but i will post pictures once this is done.

trying to decide on what products i should use i will do more research.
hopefully i find something that is superior and will help others out that own billet wheels.

 

dsms uses rejex on wheels. i've been wanting to try it as well. i've been using dg 105 to seal it. it works pretty well, and it lasts pretty long.

 

Aluminium Wheel Polishing:

Uncoated (to test apply a mild polish, if the applicator turns black (a chemical reaction between nickel and the polish) then there is no clear coat or paint finish, if the wheels are clear coated see Cleaning Wheels and Tyres. Uncoated aluminium is always in a state of tarnish.

• Magnesium or aluminium wheels can be polished with a water-soluble polish (Happich Semichrome Polish, ECP Showman Polish or Autosol)

 

i decided to prep them.
which included
degreasing
polishing
sealing.



they sure look good out of the box
the micro marring was there, otb.





after the prep all



during polish:
used mothers billet polish , with nitrile glove




i used these polishing clothes to remove the polish the worked well.


after polish

 

cheese


sealing with rejex





all done






i dont think the micromarring is removable by hand.
i think i need a machine to work the polish enough to hit the marring.
im going to stick with rejex to seal the wheels because jet seal 109 is too expensive to constantly seal the wheels.

but all in all it still looks great.

 

So are your wheels new out of the box?

 

MAKE SURE YOUR USING MOTHERS BILLET POLISH!!!!
the regular polish is too gritty. scratches the finish alot. if you do use regular mothers polish youll have to go back over it with the billet.
i used nitril gloves only!!!, everything was hand applied.
i did use microfiber towels.but they were special "polishing towels". i only used the towel to buff off sealant or polish.



the aluminum is so soft even softer then some clear coats that regular mf's mar it very easily.
from what i understand, you want to use the softest mf' you can find.
and this has its benefits and its disadvantages.
its easier to not mar the wheel.
but it takes up to 20 minutes to wipe a wheel clean of the polish.

the other issue is.
when you seal the wheel with rejex or anything else.
you almost throw all your work down the drain because when you remove the sealant you mar the finish a bit.

so what im trying to do, is figure out a few things.

how can i polish the wheel, and remove ALL the marring.
then seal it with something that i dont have to wipe off?
how can i do this in a timely matter also?
i dont have 4-6 hrs before a show to do this when the time comes.

i will try to figure out a good method for this, ive searched all over on the interwebz and have not found any specific info when it comes to keeping forged wheels mar free haze free and tarnish free.

 

No, sorry, I explained myself poorly. I bought mine new a little less than two years ago. When I unboxed them, they were pretty much perfect. What surprised me about the OP's pictures is the micro marring on them.

Mine are a little more micro marred than his. I've tried to make them look perfect again, but haven't managed it.

 

Nice looking wheels. Good luck keeping those up! Had a set of polished Centerlines on my last work van. Never again. Try using a little less polish as well there. Metal polish should be used very sparingly as it goes a loooooong way. Lets see some pics once they are on the car.

 

How about clear coat them

 

No kidding! I didn't know that was the difference. I'll give it a shot.

Now, to your question about sealing them without wiping them? I would have suggested Majestic Solutions Enviro-Shield, but they recently changed the formulation. It might be great, but I haven't used the new stuff, and am out of the old stuff.

I plan on using the same super soft microfibers I plan to polish the wheels with for wiping off a sealant. Probably Werkstat AJT, since that requires very minimal wiping. I figure that if the microfiber is soft enough to not mar during polishing, it should be okay for sealing as well.

 

The miro marring is from polishing, which the factory did a piss poor job. I would have returned them.

 

I use white diamond i have tried many over the years an i found this to be the best. reason being i have old weld racing solid aluminum rims no coating an this stuff cleaned them up nice with no pressure by hand that was the test. an once used with buffer perfect better than new just my 2 cents.

White Diamond Polish Online Store

 

meh
these arent the kind of wheels youd return.
they are custom made and vehicle specific.

they are cheaper too for the same quality of comparable manufacturers ie hre fiske iforged etc etc.

the only downside of these wheels, they dont carry a whole lot of patterns and variations.
even then there are not alot of people dropping 2-4k on wheels alone. :shrug: