Painted Wheels
 

Can anyone suggest a method for removing paint from the stock wheels? The previous owner used a rattle can to paint the stock wheels black. Needless to say he did a poor job and some of it is flaking off and in other areas he put in on too heavy and it ran.

I have tried a 'safe' paint remover and it works but it is slow and requires several repeat coats to be very effective. I would like to determine how bad the wheels aree in order to see if polishing them (wet sanding, buffing, and then clear coat) is a viable option. Otherwise I may have them powder coated.

Thanks in advance for your help.
John

I've used the stuff called aircraft stripper. This kind was at autozone made by rustolem I believe. I think there is stronger kinds out there but this worked fine for me. The brush on stuff worked better than the aersol can version Also good videos on YouTube of guys refinishing wheels.

Thanks for the suggestion. I may have some aircraft stripper in the garage. I'll give it a try tomorrow.

Thanks again!

Does anyone have a clue how Jaguar finishes their wheels. I used aircraft stripper which worked fairly good. Upon removing the paint I expected to find that I would probably also remove some of the clearcoat. It appears that was true but there was a layer of silver paint underneath and underneath that is a gray base which is hard like powdercoat. I sanded it a little but still didn't hit any metal.

In short, I was expecting to find clearcoated aluminum but didn't. I don't know where to go from here. I guess I can repaint them (but do a better job than the previous owner). But can I powdercoat them?

Painted wheels
 

I had the wheels on my Honda crv powder coated which I use as a winter car 5 years ago and are still like new and that is in Canadian hard winters , In your position I would go with powder coat and they will strip the old paint off and save you a job. BL

Most Jaguar wheels are cast aluminum, sanded, primed, base coat painted and lastly clear coated. Later models will have a more durable powder coat clear application. I have never seen any clear over polished aluminum factory Jag Wheels. Even my XKR Portfolio, five spoke BBS wheels are painted silver then cleared, most people would think they were clear over polished aluminum but not.

We have restored and refinished many wheels new and used, best bet is to first soda blast down to the metal, paint whatever color you want and powder coat clear, or go straight to powder coat in color. You will have less color options when powder coating the color instead of clear. If you paint first, your colors are unlimited. In our area, Charlotte, This can be done for about a $100.00 per wheel.

First you remove the tires from the wheels. This will make the process of stripping the wheels much easier and will avoid getting paint stripper on the tires, which could potentially eat into the rubber.
Then put on a pair of rubber gloves then apply paint stripper to the wheels. Paint stripper is very caustic so this should be done with the proper protection. Wait for the paint stripper to soak into the paint for 10 to 15 minutes.
Scrape the paint off from wheel with a plastic scraper. Maybe you have to apply the stripper several times to remove all paints