Polishing aluminum

I've done it before with modest success. Now I seem to suck at it.

These are 80's GTA Firebird wheels that were in rough shape. I sanded the remaining clearcoat off, then trued up the surfaces with 220, 320, 400, 800, and finally 1500 grit, all wet. They look great. So I fired up the buffer with some red rouge. First, it doesn't seem to be polishing at all. Its just burning the rouge and leaving the wheels an unpolished mess. I also lack the proper equipment really. All I have is an 8" wheel with some wool bonnets that are unwieldy and hard to control. Great for sheet metal, not good for wheels. I have a flitz ball, but its only really good for final looks, not polishing out scratches. What do I need to do wheels? A cone? Will it spin fast enough to do the job?

I had great success with a wheel polishing kit from Eastwood. It came with everything needed from start to finish. It did two sets of wheels and a set of motorcycle wheels with lots left over. Everything dried out a couple years ago or I would have boxed it up and sent it to you.

http://www.eastwood.com/ew-wheel-smoothing-kit.html

This is similar to the one I ordered. It was many years ago and had some additional stuff that this one does not. But the basics are there.

Wool bonnet? Does that mean you're using a random action polisher of some sort? If so, yeah, you'll die tryin'. Those are great for buffing out paint, not so good for polishing metal.

If the "cone" you are referring to are those foam things you get in the auto parts store, they work to some degree, but you might find they are better for a final polish than getting out scratches.

Nick has a good suggestion, but also check out Eastwood's and other videos about aluminum polishing. Sounds like you need the kit Nick mentioned or a buffing kit like this one http://www.eastwood.com/eastwood-buffing-kit.html.

And, of course, something to spin them with. Preferably at a high speed. A cordless drill may not be enough, but if you have a corded drill or, better yet, access to air tools, you might cut down your work time and get a better result.

Yeah, I went and bought the highest speed corded drill I could find locally. Even the standard corded drill I had at the time wasn't getting the job done.

I have a rotary buffer. Not sure how fast it spins, but about as fast as a bench grinder.

I have air tools, but I assumed that a little angle grinder would just be tedious and take weeks to cover all the area.

I've never had much luck polishing cast aluminum. The times I tried it was too porous to get much shine. Extruded polishes nicely.

Good luck.

After much cursing, I finally got it done with acceptable results. I found some felt wheels in a box and they worked much better. Using those on a drill did way better than wool on a buffer.

Before:

After wet sanding with 220, 400, 800, and 1500:

Finished product after tripoli, white, and jeweler's rouge. Now to get the paint squared away.

Beautiful!! Nice work!

those are the sexiest wheels ever made.

Nice. I wish my attempts had turned out that well.