Is my chrome toast?

P

pb_foots

New member
Before I found this forum and all the great info, I was looking for an easier way to clean the Cragar S/S rims on my Impala. Love the old school vibe, but wasn't sure how to keep the rims clean and shiny.



Anyway, the hack at the store sugested Mother's chrome polish and a powerball mini. (I know, I can hear you cringe from here). Here's the result of that cluster f

scuffedchrome.jpg




I've been searching for a way to fix this for about a year now, and although I think I already know the answer, I thought I would ask the Autopia brain trust for help before I went out and bought a new rim.



Any suggestions? Heck, I'll try anything at this point. Not like it's going to look worse! Thanks for any help.
 
Actually, mothers chrome polish with powerball mini isn't that bad of a suggestion. There are better metal polishes out there but that combo would work fine. After that just put some wheel wax on 'em to keep 'em that way. Just make sure you wash 'em first!

~Albert
 
Thanks for the response. Not sure what I did wrong then, but the shine is gone from the chrome in a bunch of spots, (sorry if it didn't show up well in the pic), any way to get that back? It looks like it's scuffed.
 
ConglomrationAL said:
Actually, mothers chrome polish with powerball mini isn't that bad of a suggestion. There are better metal polishes out there but that combo would work fine. After that just put some wheel wax on 'em to keep 'em that way. Just make sure you wash 'em first!

~Albert
Click to expand...



i think you misinterpreted his post lol. I think what he's saying is that he already tried the mothers chrome polish, and mini ball, which is what made the chrome worst. I've never tried that combo, so I dont know if you did it right or wrong or whatever, but I would recommend a mild polish such as zaino pc, zaino aio, klasse aio, or even a very mild menzerna polish such as po106, or fp2, to bring back the luster to the chrome. I'm not sure about which ones over the counter would be good though.. I'm sure others will know though. The pic is kind of blurry, but it looks like that can be polished out and fixed. You might even want to try the mothers chrome polish with just a mircofiber cloth to work into the chrome, and then buff off with a clean microfiber since I've had very good results with the mothers chrome polish
 
I'll give it a shot, thanks. I've got ZPC and the SSRs from PB, but I didn't want to do anything else to it. Sorry for the blurry pic, I'll see if I can get a better one.
 
ha! Yeah I guess I read the OP wrong. If that combo isn't working then I would try the mildest SSR you have and see if that works. If not, bump it up from there. I'd go by hand first, also.
 
pb foots- Given how hard chromium is, I fear the outermost layer of it might indeed be FUBAR (heh heh, that "Cluster-#^@%" comment has me talking all naughty :o ). Sorry, guess that's not too helpful, let alone optimistic...I'm a bit surprised that the Mother's/PowerBall made things worse though, must've already been pretty worn. That stuff must be more abrasive than I woulda expected or maybe the powerball got spinning a bit too fast.



Brightside: you could use the [messed] up rim for your spare if you currently still have the factory one.
 
Ha ha, gues I'm a bad influence huh? Sorry 'bout that. The real shame of it is that before the Mother's incident, the rims were only about a month old and I was just looking for an easy way to keep them shiny and clean. They had a lot of brake dust on them, but that's it. Luckily I stopped after I saw what I did to the first one. I used my cordless drill, but it still might have been too fast. I feel a little like Bullwinkle moose, (Don't know my own strength, presto!)



I'm thinking it'll be my spare, but wanted to try and resurrect it first. I'll try the SSRs by hand and see if that does any good. The spaces are too small for the PC to get in to.
 
pb foots- Let us know hot the SSRs work out. I'm surprised you killed such a new rim with that approach, I'd figured it was an old one. Guess that just shows how careful you have to be when you try something unfamiliar.
 
Did you remove the brake dust prior to using the powerball and mothers? It sounds like you didn't. If that is the case that is how you probably ruined the wheel. Brake dust is abrasive and when mixed with mothers and ground in with the powerball you probably did a job on them.



Am I understanding you correctly? If so, you should have cleaned the wheels properly first and then polished. Same scenario on paint. You wouldn't machine or hand polish dirty paint. You will ruin the pain.
 
"Am I understanding you correctly?"



yes sir, you are. I have always been pretty careful about the paint, but hadn't owned chrome rims since Cragar's were the de facto standard for anything with wheels. I got lazy and just went to town. I'm going to try the SSRs, and if that doesn't help it'll be a 219.00 dollar lesson. Could be worse I guess, Cragar's are pretty cheap. Luckily I never used a buffer on the Impala until I discovered this site, God only knows what damage I could have done!
 
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