The stock aluminium and painted wheels, can you tell me if they are clear coated with lacquer or are they bare?

Cheers

 

bare - guaranteed to stain & oxidize - virtually impossible to clean

 

That's what I thought, just wanting to guage how to clean them

 

They look bare to me

 

A quick look in the HD accessory catalog can fix that problem lol

 

My 09 SG wheels look like they did when they uncrated my bike in 08. Wash them on a regular basis and keep several coats of a good paste wax on them and they will look good forever.

 

How in the hell do you wax them? It's a knuckle cutting exercise for me to wash them. Short of taking them off, I'm stumped.

 

You need a good floor jack i.e. Pit Bull to get them up at a comfortable work level.
Only hard area I find is the area behind the pulley. If you have "Hulk" hands, yes you may have problems. I have a Street Glide with the "tractor wheels" (Anarchy Wheels waiting to be installed) but if you have the Ultra wheels, all those cut outs could be a real PITA.

 

I can't get my rear SG wheel to clean up to save my life. It laughed at my attempt to polish it with a dremmel last week. I am out of ideas.

mikebaby

 

To a large degree the staining, oxidizing and pitting is caused by brake dust — brake dust being corrosive. I sold the stock pads on ebay and installed Lyndall brake pads when my bike was new and now with 30k miles the wheels still look new.