really made life easier with the powdercoat, thecrappy looking rims kinda killed the clean freak in me that i had the first yr or so, but ya gotta right with the tire change interval, first time tire and wheel removal, took more time and money than i thought, but cool thing is now i got all the tools and a jack, and its getting warmer so lets get em rollin

 

Man, those red wheels with whitewalls look killer! Very cool!

 

great job on the polishing! they look 100x better!

 

Digging this thread up. .I'm in the same boat as OP. I want to powder coat but don't have the $$$ right now. The front wheel is off the bike and stripped down to just the tire. Yesterday I tried various products. .first Shout, then Simple Green (Blue extreme), and finally Flitz Aluminum Pre-Clean, before going at it with my Flitz metal polish and the powerball on the drill. Didn't really seem to make a dent in the pitted aluminum.

Unfortunately I think I'm going to have to use elbow grease and Nevr Dull. Not looking forward to it. I was hoping I'd get away with using the right products and letting them do the work for me.

OP, how long did it take with the Nevr Dull to get that nice finish? Mine have been neglected for about five years now.

Matt

Edit: This is what I started with:

 

Area I hit with some Nevr Dull:

 

The last aluminum wheels I polished out were really a pain in the ***. They look so damn good when they are shined up but man they can get ugly quick. If you like them silver you could always just put a few coats of clear on them after. There's also a clear spay on coating that peels off like plasti dip. I ended up polishing wife's wheels til they had a mirror finish and then plasti dipped them with satin black. That way if she ever got tired of the black I could just peal it off and she would have brand new shiny wheels underneath.

 

******* aluminum polish leaves a protective coat and if you buy a small ******'s power ball just put that on the end of a drill and behold!

 

I just did mine with mothers mag polish with the small ball on my drill. Took about a hour and a half per wheel.

 

scotty showed me that trick last summer power ball works great!