Rim Clean Up

What kind of methods do you guys use to clean up your rims? And what about the little shiny aluminum fin area on the rims? how do you get the black off of that

 

Go to your local auto parts dealer and get some rim cleaner.
I use stuff called "Hot Rims"
It really strips any kind of grime and brake dust off car rims and works good for bikes too.
The shiny edges clean up nice with Scotch Bright but if there is a clearcoat on it it will also remove that.
Try the rim cleaner first and see what you think. Usually you just spray it on and wait a few then rinse it off.

 

media blasting! jk

The aluminum was bare on mine, and experimenting before stripping for paint, I was able to easily polish the aluminum with 320 grit sand paper. Looked like new.

I blasted the rim in the pic yesterday not taping off the thin ribs as you can see, but before I didn't, I also checked to see how easy, or hard, it would be to bring those ribs back up to full shine from the media blasted finish.

A little scotch brite and they where looking nice, and a few minutes on each with some 320 grit paper and they would look better than new I'm sure. (If you look close, those thin ribs aren't polished from the factory, they're machined. It gave the rims a "twinkle" and it's a good look, but it's IMPOSSIBLE to replicate after needing to be refurbished after all these years.)

 

it's soooo much easier to shine up rims if their off the bike, on the axle in a vise. then you can do the callipers and all that other stuff. you can even balance the wheel if your feeling frisky

 

Not impossible at all. The challenge is polishing them in the same direction as the machining. This can be accomplished with a mini-buffing wheel and a Dremel "wand" attachment; allowing the tiny buffing wheel to be held at 90 degrees to the spokes thus buffing the machined edges "with" the machining.

 

I stand corrected.