yellowssm

I noticed the other day when cleaning my car that there are some light scratches on the lip of my wheels. Anyone else have this sort of problem?

np20412

Mothers PowerBall and the polish that they have for wheels.

DaveGS4

iTrader: (2)

I have a powerball but haven't used it yet. I did use (by hand) Mother's Billet Metal polish on the lips of my HREs that sound like they were in a similar condition and it did an excellent job of polishing them up.

TexasGS

Heavy Metal polish is the best I have ever used. It works great. I use the medium and then the fine. Check them out. http://www.heavymetalpolish.com/Products/Polishes/

Trashed

im definatly gonna have to try this have you used it on polished alimunim?

GS300Rich

I tried the mothers powerball and didnt like it at all. Polishing by hand yielded better results than with the powerball. They have a mini powerball now, maybe that will work better

carlos

iTrader: (1)

i've used the mini powerball before, it works AWESOME.

toyemp

Proceed with caution -- if the scratches are on your Volks, the scratches are probably in the clearcoat. If you polish the lips, you will be removing the clearcoat. Not the end of the world, but you will forever be polishing those lips on a monthly basis or so once the clearcoat is gone.

upstateGS4

iTrader: (1)

so youre saying that using any type of polish on clearcoated lips of wheels is going to end up removing the clearcoat from them? i find that slightly hard to believe...maybe if someone was sand polishing their metal to make it "chrome" the clear would obviously be ripped off, but simple light buffing by hand or with one of those powerballs is going to strip the wheels of their clear? i dont know about all that... if so, what should i be doing with my new 20 inch axis milanos plus' to keep them scratch free and cleaned up? they are silver with what i believed to be was a clearcoated/polished lip and ive used a few different polishes on them that have not damaged their surface/lip at all, and there is definitely no clearcoat flaking off in chunks because i used it.... any insight now?

toyemp

Just as buffing your car removes paint, polishing (or any sort of friction for that matter) will remove clear. Depending on how much you polish, you may remove just a minor amount that it wont matter or if you go hog-wild, you will polish all the way thru to the bare metal. As with anything, your mileage may vary.

I recall seeing a thread about 6 month ago or so here at CL where one of the senior members here removed the clear off of all of his wheels (intentionally) using nothing but a rag and metal polish by hand. (Did a quick search and couldn't find the thread. will keep looking for it)

I'm not familiar with Axis' so I can't tell you if they have clear or not. I do have a set of Volk GT-S on my Z and a set of Work VS-XX on my GS430 and both have very soft clear on the lips. Both sets are less than a couple months old and I've scratched at least one wheel on each set when I was checking the air pressure and just lightly touched the lip with the tire gauge. On the Volks, I've heard the clear referred to as "anodized clear" but I've never been sure what that meant and if "anodized clear" was paint or some other technology. For both, rather than risk removing the clear, I've learned to just accept it.

On the OEM rims for my other GS430, I've rubbed the clear off just using a diluted solution of simple green and a rag. Wasn't pressing hard, just was intending to clean them up. That was a big mistake on my part.

toyemp

found the thread I was thinking of. The comments about maintaining clear start around post # 12

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=220135

upstateGS4

iTrader: (1)

thanks, im pretty curious about this myself i dont want to do anything that could cause damage and really would like to avoid scratches when cleaning