[cowmeat]

Background:

My Gen-1 Insight has those boring OEM machined rims with a clear coat. Not only is the clear coat chipping and peeling off the rims, but I just don't really like the machined look. I curbed my wife's brand new polished aluminum rim a couple of weeks ago on her Explorer and need to fix it, so I figured I'd practice on my rims, and get the mirrored look I want at the same time!

Steps to change a machined rim to a polished mirror finish:

1- Pull rim from car, lay flat and clean off all the dirt, carbon, etc . . .
2- spray on citrus based paint stripper, leave on for 20 minutes
3- Using a scrub brush, loosen the gelled clear coat, then rinse off and dry the rim
4- Using a mouse, sand the entire rim with higher and higher grit of sand paper. I started with 200 grit, paying special attention to the lip of the rim, which had a lot of curb rash. I ended up wet-sanding with 600 grit, only because I couldn't find higher grit paper. Would have been easier if I had finished with 1000, or even 2000 grit
5- Using an orbital buffer and polishing compound, buff the entire rim until very smooth (this takes a while depending on the final grit of the sand paper!)
6- Using a cone buffer with handle on a corded drill, buff out all the grooved & curved areas the orbital buffer can't reach. You can really get some torque with that handle. Keep rinsing off the build-up as you go.
7- Using a buffing wheel on a corded drill, polish the rim to a mirror shine
8- laying the rim flat, spray it with two light coats of clear coat (deck of cheap playing cards spaced around the perimeter keeps paint off the tire)
9- re-mount rim, and enjoy the new look!

Total time spent, about 2 hours, but the next ones will go way quicker since this was the experimental rim. Total cost, about 40 bucks, but I have enough supplies left over to do the rest of my rims and my wife's. Well worth the time, effort and expense. I will have the only set of polished Gen-1 Insight rims on the planet when I finish the rest next weekend!