Heres something you should try if you need to polish your mags.

I spent the $90 on all the crap, the superduty wax, the pollishing tools. the rubing compounds. That process takes about an hour a wheel and though I have done it many times befor, I have just never been all that happy with the results.



Sure the wheels get shiny and clean but they just never get that whiter then Casper look that new wheels have out of the box.



Well I discovered the secret today. After trying to polish the first wheel and not being happy with it I decided I would wash off all the wax and polish right down to the alluminum and start again. I figured my wool buffing wheel needed cleaning at the same time. So I poared "fantastic" out of my 1 gallon jug right into the wool pad and used that to scrub the wheel.

Well that fantastic on the buffing pad lathered up into a thick foam so much so that I coldn't see the wheel, so I just did the whoile wheel. I had to use the garden hose to rinse it all off and I couldn't believe my eyes. The wheel was soo brite it was like a mirror finish and silver-white like new alluminum.

The foamed fantastic acted like a cleaning lubricant and the wool polished the wheel.



The pictures just don't do it justice. But If you look into the reflection on the left of each wheel inthe two individual pictures, you can see the biege metal building towering up to the sky. On the polished wheel is a bit blured, on the fantastic wheel its almost a mirror image.

Belive me to see them in person its a huge difference.



The fantastic wheel is on the right.


By the way, I didnt bother polishing the other three wheels, they all came out the same with the fantastic. I used 1/2 gallon of fantastic $2 worth to do four wheels.

M1D

Might be a dumb? but did you use the buffing wheel on the buffer or did you just soak it in "Fantastic" and do it by hand?

I'm too much of a lazy ass to do them by hand.
I used the wool buffing wheel on the grinder, A little high speed for buffing and polishing paint but ok for clean metals.

As I said I pored the fantastic ( about 4 oz right on the nut in the middle) onto the that "wet"wool buffing wheel you see and went at it. And I did the same with the smaller one on the drill for in the wholes. With both machines , the fantastic quickly lathered up into a thick foam. It is the speed of the machines that made it wip into a lather about like whipping cream. It only took about 5 minutues to do each wheel. Just don't let it dry, one I had to add a little more fantastic. Then I flipped the wheel over and did the painted inside, all the brake dust and road grime came right off with the fantastic. It was awsome! None of it was done by hand, 5 minutes!! done!

My wheels were in fairly good shape allready, I had polished them last year and the year before using the rubbing compound and same machines. They were quite bad when I bought the van.

Before any buffing they looked like this, after buffing with rubbing compound they looked like the first picture.




Now


M1D

One more tip:

before starting with compound or wax or anything, spray the tires with that tire rejuvinator or armourall or whatever and rub it in. Then wipe the exccess off the rim . That will prvent the tires from having wax stains as the splash wont stick on the rubber.

If you ever got wax or rubbing compound onto dry rubber or black plastic and tryed to clean it out afterwards you know what I am talking about.

M1D

dam nice, thanks for the tip......

Very nice!!

Wonder if this would work on chrome rims also???? I also hate cleaning rims

Great timing Michel !

I just got a set of "Weld" wheels and will try the Fantastic & Woolie later today.

Dan

Dan,your welds look like they are in nice shape,My wifes daily driver for 9 years (years ago ) was a 79 2wheel drive big block suburban and I had welds on it . I used heavy metal liquid wheel polish once every 6 months on it. I spent 6 minutes per wheel polishing them (with a rag) and they allways looked new. Bill

Tried the Fantastic. Didn't work very well on these. Went and got some "Mother's" Aluminum polish and did one wheel, it looks much better. Will try some Diamond plate polish I have tomorrow and see what happens...

Dan

Would that work on my dog dish hubcaps? They're aluminum and I can't seem to polish them.

I tried the fantastic with poor results. Mothers worked much better

cool I'll try that. Not sure if you have any stock hubcaps on your vans, but do you know if they would work on them?

I will post the name of the aluminum cleaner/polish that I use when I get back out to my shop. Best cleaner/polish that I have found . I use it to polish on vintage motorcycles everyday.

Eco
http://www.retro-cycles.com

Heres an older product from the 50's = Semichrome polish- motorcycle shops sold this and was a small tube & worked great-might look 4 it