One of my jeeps has factory steel wheels. Nothing special.

They are rusting, not serious dangerous, just ugly.

Any suggestions on how to clean these up. I suspect steel wool and elbow grease, but I was not sure if anyone had come across some better methods.

Thanks,
Keith

 

4" angle grinder with a wire wheel or brush and Spray paint. thats all you need.

 

yeas ago they mde stuff called naval jelly it worked real well on rusted wheels

 

You could use a grinder with a wire wheel, spray en-rust or ospho then paint them.

 

X2 on Naval Jelly

It comes in a pink plastic jar and disolves rust COMPLETELY..all thats left is clean bare metal. I haven't seen it for years either, but its nasty stuff(most things that work are nasty..DDT, R12, leaded gas, etc) . Another route is abrasive blasting, you can usually find outfits that will do a wheel for between $50-$80 each

 

Here it is, I think ill order some of this because my rims are shot to. Not to bad but to the point that they need to be repainted. Also if you want to refinish them like I did with my Classic Rims, use 320 grit sandpaper and alot of time and effort as well as about two cans of paint for primer, paint and clear coat. But thats if you want a factory finish. If you just want to paint it to cover the rust then just sand it and get a good enough surface for the paint to stick to.

 

green or red scuff pad and paint of your choice. We did my gfs over the summer with black hammered spray paint

 

There are tons of wheel shops near my office in L.A. They usually start reconditioning a wheel with some type of media blast. Generally their work looks great – wheel is blasted, straightened as necessary, and refinished. But they get $$$$ for this work, $149 just for the blasting!! And that’s PER wheel. (Horrible Freight has a blaster on sale now for $199.) The wire wheel method should work fine too, but if you have a lot of parts that need cleaning and refinishing then maybe a blaster is in your future. ;-)

 

navel jelly at napa is part # 765-1292

 

Or you could have steelies like mine where they were not rusting in the front, just peeling, but inside the wheel where the water sits because the genius's at Chrysler designed a wheel with no water weep holes... This happened on my XJ and my dads XJ the same way. I have had to put air in the front passengers tire every 4 days as it loses air. Yesterday I pulled the wheel, found the leak, ground it to bare metal and JB'd it till I get my new wheels in a few weeks. Nice design!!!

 

Scuff pad/sand paper/wire brush and a couple of JY steelies clean-up nice to mount snows. A little black paint and from 20', cant hardly tell the center caps are missing.

 

I just painted the stock steel wheels on my 1999. I used the following procedure and had great results. No need to even remove the tires from the wheels.

The cost was 2 cans of primer, 3 cans of paint, 1 can of clear coat and a few hours of my time. Here is the low down on the “how to”.

1. Remove wheels from vehicle
2. Remove center caps
3. Sand all wheel surfaces throughly with 220 grit sandpaper. This is CRITICALLY important!
4. Wash wheels with soap and water
5. Use alchohol or lacquer thinner for a final cleaning of all surfaces
6. Get an old deck of cards. Spread cards all around the wheel with slight overlap. No taping!
7. Spray 2 coats of "self etching primer". Wait a couple of minutes between coats
8. After 2nd primer coat, wait a few hours for the primer to completely set up
9. Spray at least 2 coats of wheel paint (Rustoleum, Duplicolor have a good silver) allowing sufficient drying time between coats. Check the instructions on the paint can for specifics.
10. Spray one or two additional coats of clear coat over the paint to protect it
11. Enjoy your new wheels!

 

I was going to tackle this project on a set of Soft 8’s that I bought. All 4 wheels needed plenty of work. I would up finding a guy about an hour away that will sand blast them and powder coat them for $60 per wheel.

 

New 15X7 Soft 8 $46 at Jegs.

 

I've got 15x8. And I want them in silver. Plus, what's final cost shipped?