*Tech Week* D/A Sander Aluminum Wheel Re-Finishing

Here is a thread about re-finishing aluminum wheel lips on old mag wheels that have severe oxidation or curb rash.
I use my air powered D/A or "dual action" sander to sand off all the blemishes, and then I spin the wheel in a home made fixture to give the wheels their final finish.

Here is our candidate wheel. It has had some repairs done on the lip, and it also has pretty good oxidation:




Here are the basic tools and materials needed:
-Dual action sander.
-40, 80, 100, and 180 grit sanding discs.


I start off with a 40 grit disc and go to town sanding on the wheel lips making sure to keep the sander moving. It will remove some material, but it is not as aggressive as you might think:


After a few minutes, this is how the wheel will look. You can see the swirl marks left by the sander, but the scratches, rash and oxidation are now completely gone:


I next move on to the 80 grit disc. The 80 grit disc will remove far less material than the 40 grit, but it will make finer sanding marks on the wheel. Here is the wheel after the 80 grit disc:


The next part of the process will need some sort of fixture that will spin the wheel. I don't have a lathe big enough to accept a wheel, so I had to invent something.

I made a simple fixture out of an old spindle and hub. It bolts to an I-beam that is attached to the back of my lathe. The wheel will bolt to this fixture. The fixture has a pivot on the bottom that allows the the whole ***embly to pivot:


The chuck on my lathe has a pneumatic tire and wheel ***embly mounted in it. When the power on the lathe is turned on, the pneumatic tire spins in the chuck. The spindle ***embly is pivoted so the wheel makes contact with the spinning tire, and the wheel now spins in the opposite direction. The wheel does not spin very fast, but it is fast enough to allow some finish work with sandpaper. By grabbing the top of the spindle, you can control how much contact pressure there is between the wheel and the pneumatic tire:


You can also make a similar fixture using an electric motor to spin the pneumatic tire, or mount a wheel in a balancing machine. Use your imagination.

Now that we have a spinning wheel, we need to do some finish work by hand. I go back to 40 grit sandpaper and hold it against the wheel as it spins. At this point you can also do the horizontal surface and the other vertical surface. You will want to repeat this process with 80 , 100 120 and finally 180 grit sandpaper. The more time spent with each grit will yield better results:


Here is the wheel after some 80 grit on the spinning wheel:


Here is the finished wheel after the final sanding with 180 grit:



I have used this process on dozens of wheels with the same excellent results. Wheels with a raised rib on the wheel lip can also be done, but it will require a little more care when sanding with the D/A so as not to knock down too much of the rib. Here is another E.T. wheel I did:

 

Not to highjack your thread, but instead of taking the time to build the fixture, just mount them to a rear end in a running car, put it on jack stands and in first gear...at idle spins a nice speed for polishing the wheels.....

 

That would be far more dangerous. You run a risk of the car coming off of the jack stands. Especially with you pushing back and forth on the wheel, even if it is just slightly.

 

Continue your process up to 800 grit and then use some polish.........oooh shiny.

 

I'm digging the fixture, puts it at a much better position/height to work on. And if you're gonna do four of them that'll help. And you'll always have it for the next time. The lathe will also give you much better control over speed.

 

all tech week to the top 31

 

The rig would be fairly easy to make with a little imagination and an electric motor. A spinning wheel on a jacked up car,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,welllllllll,,,,,,,,, not so much.
Then we get a thread with "Djaever have a car fall on you?"

 

CZUCH....did not have a car fall on me......BUT......i set my hand and arm on FIRE!

YEP, the dust from 'real magnesium' american 5-spoke wheels will ignite!

that was 1966, figgered the garden hose would keep the crocus/emery cloth lubricated enough to head off the FIRE/ EXPLOSION.......WRONG!

i'm sure my 'fire dance' was the talk of the neighborhood! i was relieved when the
fire burned itself out.

red ryder

 

Building the rotating part fixture would allow you to work on this stuff in the warmth of the garage. I often chuck small round parts into my cordless drill so I can rotate them while grinding / cleaning / polishing, on my bench grinder / wire wheel / polisher. I had not thought of the rotating tire for large parts. Thanks for the tip!

 

a brake lathe will also work

 

Another setup option might be to run an axle through the headstock of the lathe such that the splined end of the axle is over the bed and held by the chuck. You would then have an axle flange hanging out the left end of the lathe where you could bolt your wheel. Of course, this requires either a hole in your lathe's spindle larger than the axle or a fabbed up piece that will fit. This could be the perfect use for a broken axle.

 

I finished a set of E.T. big and littles today (14x6) and (15x7) using the same process I described above:



I also finished the lip of a 15 x 8 1/2 Torq Thrust wheel today that was really rough:

 

I like your work! Any tip's for alum. slot's? Thank you for the tech posting.

 

Nice! Much better!

 

The same process works for slots on the outer part of the wheel, but I am still working on a process that will work near the slots so as not to lose a finger.

 

Very cool and simple tech.

 

Here is what I accomplished today, a 15 x 7" Fenton Gyro that was trashed:

 

Nice work!

 

DAMNATION! Man, I wish you lived in town. I got 2 full set's and a few stay's that need your touch!