'95 Pontiac Grand Prix "Pre-gen" Wheels

[danielle]

Hello everyone! Sorry I haven't been around much. With the new job I have been crazy busy, and sadly I have neglected the car a lot. Washing it is about as far as I've gotten since last summer.

Lee recently picked up a '95 Pontiac Grand Prix as a prospective work beater, but it was beyond repair and went to scrap last week. However.....it had these beauties on it which he kept and I am putting on my '99 GP. The car they came off of had 280k miles and was 20ish yrs old. So you can imagine the neglect and abuse they have seen.

Here are some before pictures....

Teaser mocked up next to the car...



One of the better ones before:









And some afters:
I only used Spray & Rinse and a wheel scrub brush!







And here is the 1 problem child. Obviously I have some peeling issues going on, but this wheel just would not come clean.
These are after 2 apps of spray and rinse with some scrubbing due to how bad and cacked on the crap was....









I have not done any polish or trying to get the really fine stuff off and only have use spray and rinse. My question is, what is suggested to try and get that one rim to match the others? I have some ProPolish and wheel sealant along with ssr 1-3. My idea was to clay bar them all, polish to help get rid of the fine scratches and shine them up a bit and then apply wheel sealant. I'm not sure how aggressive with polish you can get on wheels? Who knows, maybe once I clay and do some pro-polish, it will take care of it. I just didn't have the stuff up at the house with me so I didn't try it.

I realize that idealy, sand blasting and powdercoat is the best option for these to come back to 100%, but I don't have the funds to do such. Especially when there is nothing wrong with the stock wheels I am rocking now. These are just a fun wheel to run for awhile as the offset looks awesome on my body style. In theory, I'd like to keep this a low cost project if I need to spend more money. I am decent with a rattle can, but I'd like to avoid it on the wheels.


Also....does spray and rinse stain concrete drives? I apparently didn't rinse the driveway as well as I did yesterday and Lee said it left a dark path where the water had ran. Hopefully the rain will take care of that.

 

[Poorboy]

hi Danielle ... you have gotten pretty far but there is a lot of pitting into the metal and I'm not sure anything will get it all out, but a good idea might be to "rattle can" the inside barrel black and it might enhance the rest after you polish the wheels ... not sure I've seen S&R stain concrete .. maybe it's cleaning it??

 

[sscully]

Danielle ,

Sure did clean those up quick.

Hard to tell for sure, from the picture, but the problem child wheel; that almost looks like the clear on it has peeled off. You can try polishing it to see what happens.

As for the driveway, that is the rinse trail of years of brake dust and crud. if you don't get after it with a higher pressure stream of water, the brake dust sets into the pours in the concrete. I've cleaned that off with PB Driveway cleaner and a still brush.

 

[danielle]

Thanks guys! Yeah, the wheels are peeling pretty bad on the inside. That one is the only one showing signs on the outer face. It was worth a shot. I'm going to try my best to polish them up in the next few weeks as I have time. They were free to me, so I can't really complain to much.

The driveway didn't look as dark as it had yesterday, so the rain has rinsed most of it away. I didn't think to rinse away all the grime. Whoops The driveway needs cleaned anyways, so I was just trying to help Lee out, lol. He finally bought a house in December...so that's where I was. I finally have a nice garage bay to work in! Yay!!!! lol

I really love S&R tho. I used it on my truck for work and it made a 180* difference on those rims. Everyone needs this stuff!

 

[sscully]

Think it comes down to how much do you want to invest in them.

Spraying the inside black ( masking the face area to prevent overspray ) will help with making them look better, but that one problem wheel is going to keep peeling.

Don't know if it is worth powder coating them now, before mounting them ( going to cost a bit ) ?? That is something you are going to have to weight out the cost vs reward on.