Recently been "freshening up" our 01 F250 truck. Replaced mirrors with lighted one, replace headlamps with newer style, add running boards etc. One thing these projects had in common and hard to look past, how bad the center caps & lugs have rusted, general shape of the aluminum wheels. Found myself cropping pics when the wheels showed up

Admiring our 'new' headlights, man I need to do something about those caps...

Adding the running board-there's those darn wheels again

Taking picture of new LED mirrors-hey amber lenses matches the centers cap. Bird poops on the door,. Well that's apropos, wheels look like bird chit.

So got on line looking for replacements. Our wheels use the flange derby style center caps. Cheezy things, but looked nice when new. Wow these pieces of junk are expensive, more surprised at the price of lug nuts. Found some rears center caps that don't have logo stamped on them so just ordered.

Bucket a rust...8 years on the central coast. I use to wax them but losing effort. The wheels though I try to keep up, don't really look too bad, against new caps they show their age. So attempting to machine polish.

Sanded out worst of scratches dings with 400, cut with tripoll and hard buff wheel then straight white rough on soft wheel. Taking the sanding up a few grits will ease cut polish work and yield a much better finish. Second wheel I did an interim white polish with a hard wheel before going soft and it was noticeable. But any sanding really need to spend more time on and go thru higher grits. One of those the more time and effort the better the results things. I do have a variable sander/polisher, and assorted wheels etc but still tried to minimize amount of work, it shows. On 8 years old wheels I maybe took off 5 years. But overall they look better.

Well, front wheel dish out, not too bad to polish also done on truck. The back ones, inside the dish, are a pain, even removed. Got one done and sat side by side to 'see' results and motivation to do other wheel.

Pictures don't really show difference well. Either how bad the wheels looked before or how much better afterwards, but it was enough comparing for me to continue. I maybe got 75% of corrosion off and only sanded the worst gouges and scratches but they are at least twice as shiny, luster not what they were new but definitely improved reflection.

Before

After

Just a lot of freakin work. Good enough....

And mounted.

Wow- with the new center caps and lug nuts all the reflective going on surprised me. Made the effort worthwhile.

This though made me happy, its what I always see, no more ring of rust.

not fun and certainly not practical, just hate seeing stuff deteriorate-

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