Painted hub faces on my forged wheels - how to fix

I got a great deal on some forged aluminum wheels.  They were track wheels, so the owner, who owned a paint shop, offered to paint them for me as part of the deal.  They used an epoxy primer and paint - these wheels were not powdercoated.

The paint looks great, but the problem is that I've got a little extra- they painted the hub faces :-(

What does GRM say is the best way to go about a remedy?  I called a few places and they are thinking to sand it off, but I don't really like the idea of sanding an aluminum part too much... most of these guys do not work with forged aluminum, they are working with cast wheels.

I'm thinking I tape off around the hub where I want the paint to stay, then brush on aircraft stripper and use a plastic blade to scrape it off.  Repeat until I get to the point where maybe a scour pad, or extra fine steel wool, can take care of the rest.

Any better approaches?  I don't want to ruin the hubs on my nice forged wheels.

Hub faces? As in the mounting faces?  Or an outward facing appearance thing?

I would probably run them as is. 

Take it to a machine shop and have them surface them using a milling machine.

In reply to Toyman01 (Moderately Supportive Dude) :

If run as is they will need re-torquing every 2 laps until the paint wears away. Probably what I would do though.

What kind of wheel?  Post a picture of what you have, it will make a difference on what method to recommend.

If the paint is on a raised portion, careful work with wet-and-dry sandpaper may be the easiest and safest.  Paint stripper likes to leak underneath masking tape, so that method may be risky if you want to save the rest of the paint job.

I've gotten one of those mildly abrasive fiber discs and then used on other stuff to make it really non-aggressive, then just gently knocked the paint off with the used disc at a pretty low speed, taking care not to stay in one spot.

These aren't my wheels but they are the wheel i have.  See the shiny bit in the center of each of these wheels?  On mine, this part is painted black.  Because this is where it meets the hub, I want to be careful about knocking it "out of true"

I would use an abrasive paint removing pad on a drill instead of sanding.  

For that, I'd just use fine sandpaper.  Use a block of wood to back up the paper, so you sand the surface evenly and leave it flat.

shotgun? 

Wire wheel? I'd be hesitant to use a scotchbrite pad, they'll eat away the aluminumiunum. You just want to trash the paint.

Just go at it with this:

Don't use that 3m disc, it's made for steel not aluminum. Start with 180 grit sandpaper on a flat sanding block and keeping flat to the surface sand in an orbital motion. You should be able to remove the majority of the paint that way. Then finish cleaning the surface with 400 grit and you should have a clean flat surface.

I think I'd start chemically to hopefully require less mechanical grunt. Brake cleaner? Paint thinner? Oven cleaner? They'd probably soften the paint enough that it could be scraped off with a plastic razor or outlet cover (in a pinch).

I sort of agree with your idea of taping and stripping with chemicals. You do not want to remove any material other than the paint. Or maybe a heat gun like you can use refinishing furniture? Just a thought.

So many bad ideas here. Another alternative would be soda blasting. It will remove the paint and not damage the metal. As a paint and body person with 40+ years experience, I can tell you the chance of not getting unintended damage from the stripper is very small. If you go ahead and use a chemical stripper, be prepared for the fact that you may wind up having tpo strip all the paint.

NAPA sells these rubber tipped thingiies, different colors indicate their stiffness.  I would get the softest one available, much less aggressive than the 3M wheel above; it won't mess with the base metal.

wire wheel.

 that's what I would do.

Gasket scraper.   Putty knife.

 So many possibilities.

I would ignore it and run 'em.

Given a few years of running, swapping, etc, all that paint is going to wear off where it needs to, if it wears off at all.  If it's even a problem.

Wire wheels chew up aluminum, paint stripper will be difficult to isolate to just the hub face.

Don't make this more complicated than it really is.