gencollon2

I decided to clean my 951 Club Sport Wheels with Mothers "All Wheel Cleaner"
That was a mistake. It says in fine print on the bottle "Not for use on anodized wheels", which I now know my wheels were.

I sprayed the product on the wheels, waited 15 seconds, and hosed it off, leaving strange etches in the finish. No amount of scrubbing with soap will clean these wheels up. Has anybody got experience with removing anodizing?
I doubt it is worth it to dismount the tires, send the wheels in to be refinished, which means I can either polish the wheels with finer and finer sandpaper, and make them all shiny, or clean them up some and plastidip them black or something along those lines and wait a year to update to newer wheels.

Here are the wheels uncleaned (only the front 2 were damaged).






And the rear wheels (same 1 week of driving no cleaning)

jimbo1111

Rubbing compound. If you have any deep scratches than use 600 sandpaper move up to 800 and finish it with 1200 grit wet sandpaper and rubbing compound. You will probably do all four after you see the results on the first.

JET951

Unfortunately no product can bring them back to their original finish.
Personally i would have them refinished. the original anodising is very classy, polished CS wheels look cheap and nasty.
Sean

kevincnc

Unfortunately your Anodize is toast, and they will keep oxidizing unress you strip and re-anodize, or polish and clear-coat. I personally think the anodize looks better. I had a couple of dings welded, so anodizing wasn't an option becasue they told me the fixed spots would look bad. If yours don't have bad dings, I would get them re-anodized. If you want polished, maybe we could trade so i can have some nice original lloking ones again..

kevincnc

gencollon2

I haven't really been a fan of the polished CS wheels either, but I just saw a set here in classifieds that somebody was asking $1000 for, and it is something I can do for free essentially. $1000 gets me pretty far in terms of getting a new uses set of wheels....

I did a cheap Pshop of what the wheels would look like if I plastidipped them black (and got clear sidemarkers) total cost of this would be around $90. Seems like a good option; in a year or two when I have money I could peel the dip off and have them refinished.

dillon410021

white 951's are beautiful! enough said

Ben951S

Ugh. Body shop did this to my wheels when they were 'cleaning up' the car. I took $400 as payment for the damage, as I will turn them into track wheels and the amount of 'value' they destroyed. Of course, getting them re-anodized is about $250 a wheel from wheel enhancement... d'oh. I can find minty CS wheels for $800 so I'd go that route, but I want a set of non-staggered for winters... so I might find another set of 7'' wheels. Hey op, want to sell those fronts and find a proper front set?

Scott H

Mine are in similar condition, putting a light coat of petroleum jelly (recommended by the manual) will restore a little shine and hide some of that damage.

gencollon2

So after seeing the black Pshop, I have had 3 friends tell me to paint them white... I guess I will have to Pshop that next, it would be a NIGHTMARE to keep a white car with white wheels looking good.

I might actually be up for a sale Ben, if I could find another set of fronts to throw on there. It is a M030 car though, so those wheels should be wide. I will be looking a little but if anybody sees some let me know? Thanks.
$800 for minty ones? Hmmmm, think polished are worth as much?

I doubt a thin coat of jelly could hide the white oxide coating, it is a little more noticeable than it appears in those pics.

That's what I get for trying to clean my car well :_(
Oh well, non R comp tires that fit are very scarce anyway, I think I will be going to 17s in the next year when my tires wear out. What does everyone else do? Grab some old Boxster/993 wheels maybe?

FrenchToast

Sorry to hear that. I've used wheel cleaner on anodized wheels before and they were fine.

I've used it on polished wheels too, which didn't work too well. Took about 12 hours to restore the spotting on the lips.

Maybe aluminum polish could remove or soften the scratches. Since they're anodized, might not do anything.

Bridgestone RE-11's are available in 245/45/16, If that's what you're looking for. Matching fronts too, pretty sure. Look on RL's sponsor TireRack.

Take care!

Justin S2

Nice picture above, I really dig the red S2.

Not a big fan of painting those black. If you're trying to go for an outlandish look, how about red wheels for a GT3-like fashion?

Mighty Shilling

Try rubbing vaseline on them. It won't fix it but it will mask em to an extent.

SirLapsalot

Try taking some wheel bearing grease and polishing them with that. I made the same mistake as you only not as much wheel cleaner got onto my wheel before I noticed. I used the wheel bearing grease trick and they looked new again.

Ben951S

Friend used a wheel prep and got most of it out on my car...probably just removed the rest of the ano.