ACValkyrie

I've been looking into doing a detail on the car and was wondering if anyone had any tips for polishing the oem 16" wheels, mostly looking to take out some minor scratches and shine them up. I'm fairly new to detailing, am I safe approaching it like I'm hand polishing part of the body with compound, polish and wax? Any advice is appreciated, happy to be part of the community too.

LeX2K

Depends how badly they are scratched. Your wheels are painted so the process is just like body work, polish or if necessary touch up paint or a total repaint. Post a couple of images.

ACValkyrie

Here's a couple pics, like i said its fairly minor, lots of it is on the centre caps which is a relief in a way and some little chips

LeX2K

That's very minor especially considering how old your car is. For the center cap can try finding a good used one, the wheel itself hit it with touch up paint. I get mine from a local auto body supply do you happen to be in Calgary?

CELSI0R

Keep in mind that the paint on the plastic center caps is thin compared to the rims.

As Lex2K mentioned, I would suggest touch up paint for the chips on your rim. Those probably happened from shops removing the cap with a screwdriver

For the center caps, compound and polish by hand should do the trick if they're not too deep. Worst case, leave them be, as your caps are much nicer than 99% of others out there, and it will be tough to find a cheap replacement in good condition that matches without repainting them.

ACValkyrie

Edmonton actually! I'll definitely be giving them a polish, maybe get some practice in on the spare wheel too. I'm the second owner, it was taken care of really well, I've just been looking to try and get it as nice as possible lol

LeX2K

Dupli-Color hyper silver is a close match but it only comes in a spray bomb. Also they don't seem to sell just the single can anymore have to buy the kit.

ACValkyrie

Hmm interesting, I wonder if the place I got my touch-up paint for the body would be able to get a good match, when I called Lexus for paint they actually recommended a small paint shop (Non Lexus/Toyota) that turned out really good. I'll definitely fall back to the duplicolor you mentioned if I end up doing a full paint

heyTony

you are worrying about inconsequential/unimportant things. You might want to worry about other things to fix on these cars like all the random electric motors and aging ECU/computers. Get new wheel caps (I believe they are still available to be purchased from Japan) if you really want your wheels to be show-room quality. Maybe dab them up with body-filler for the gaps and paint it all again. If you want to go the extra-mile, you can also still purchase the ENTIRE wheel set and different versions of it for the LS400 from online retailers. Maybe be a badass and send your wheels out to be refurbished to brand-new or even get them completely modified for modern-day style and tire size:

Don't be boring bro we're nearing 2024 now and new engineering has gone into these old cars