Has anyone taken the paint off of the aluminumn wheels and buffed them? Is it a difficult job?

Gene

 

Welcome to the site! You'll find this is the best place for anything HHR!
I haven't done the particular wheels that come on the HHR, but I've stripped & polished other alloy wheels, it's alot of work. You either have to constantly keep them polished to keep the lustre, or clear coat them. problem is, anytime a tire is mounted/dismounted, the coating is compromised, leaving the rim vulnerable to the elements. If you live in an area that doesn't use road salt, you'll probably never have a problem with clearcoat.

 

Welcome. Calif, uh, my guess is you only use salt on your food. Some of us get it put all over our roads in the winter so that we need new cars faster due to the rust . Sorry can't answer your question but I would agree with jeffs396

 

Gene.....

There is a company that produces a clear coat that is essentially "scratch proof". I believe it is in Calif. It may be the same people that supply the OEM industry.

After this stuff is correctly applied, I have seen demonstrations of attempts to scratch with the edge of a coin....which does not work.

If I can find the name......I'll post.

 

I'm currently in the process of polishing my aftermarket wheels back to their initial shine; it's a bit of a pain, and I'm guessing that I'm going to have to do that every year, since they came without any protection (just a polished finish, so some tarnishing & brake dust stains are present). I had applied some protective wax on them, but that doesn't seem to have helped much. I may look into something like a clearcoat in the near future, but then small repairs / touch-up become more problematic.

If you need to strip an existing layer of paint / clear, then it's another step in the process; some paint strippers may work (and not damage the wheel metal finish), but you'd have to test before. I've removed some clearcoat off of wheels some years ago, and even with some paint stripper, it involved quite a bit of elbow grease. I didn't care too much about the appearence then, because they were for winter use (and quite damaged to begin with).

Yves