HELP!!! EASY OFF RUINED MY ALLOY RIMS!!!

Rat Rod Bikes Bicycle Forum

Help Support Rat Rod Bikes Bicycle Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Joined
May 22, 2020
Messages
302
Reaction score
546
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
So, here's the long and short of it. Bought a Jamis BOSS cruiser w beautiful blue anodized rims. Went to clean them w a little polish and it ate right through the 35 year old anodize.:envy::envy::envy::20::20::20::headbang:So at that point, made the decision to remove all the color...such a shame because the rims were a beautiful color of blue. Anyway, I remembered as a kid, we used to use easy off to remove anodized color. So...did that today, got all the color off, but the easy off discolored the aluminum. Its still silver, but its blotchy and looks horrible. I have tried: never dull, rubbing compound, Brillo pads, 00 steel wool, toothpaste, WD-40, noxon metal polish, lacquer thinner and soap and water. Nothing even slightly un does the damage done by the easy off. Anyone have any ideas?
BTW, on the second wheel I just used elbow grease and a few Brillo pads and the rim looks beautiful.
 
EZ off and Brillo pads with the soap in them for removing anodizing. Then typically vinegar as RG mentioned. If you get impurities in your aluminum and it gets spots or streaks you usually wind up sanding
 
Ultimately, I had to sand the rim by hand w 120. NOTHING else worked to get the clear off. I even tried brass brush wheels on my Dremel to no avail. I learned the hard way. As far as removing the color from the rear wheel, I just used straight wet Brillo pad and the wheel looks beautiful. As far as the front, I m going to have to sand and polish to get the 120 scratches out. You can see the results of the sanding in the pic. IMO...DO NOT EVER USE EASY OFF ON ALUMINUM. I have LITERALLY 16 hours in this front wheel. Anyway...here it is...another CL find.
20201108_175836.jpg
20201108_175819.jpg
 
I used to use Easy Off on aluminium for one purpose: remove anodising and oxidation so I could bond it to fibreglass before co-moulding with carbon composite. I would use aluminium parts on prototypes, but all production pieces were first Stainless Steel, then Titanium as both are less prone to galvanic corrosion. Anodising and oxidation is a contaminant when bonding with epoxy.

Wheels look nice, even if a hard lesson was learnt.
 
Glad it worked out. I was going to suggest light sand blasting followed by media blasting using something like pecan shells. I never tried it but I have heard it works. I did have a Edelbrock aluminum intake sand blasted. It came out clean but satin finish. That is what the follow up with shells is supposed to correct.
 
Glad it worked out. I was going to suggest light sand blasting followed by media blasting using something like pecan shells. I never tried it but I have heard it works. I did have a Edelbrock aluminum intake sand blasted. It came out clean but satin finish. That is what the follow up with shells is supposed to correct.
Walnut shells or corn cobs do a gorgeous job on raw aluminium. They clean everything up whilst removing only the streaks and such. I would end up making mechanical groove into my aluminium parts for mechanical adhesion as I was trying to get that mechanical bond between aluminium and epoxy soaked fibreglass, then carbon fibre. Probably if I would have media blasted the material, the bond would have even been better! One person suggested media blasting, so instead of doing it on what I was SUPPOSED to be doing it on, I did it on a Cannondale CAAD5 aero frame and it just looked lean and mean!
 
I had my last Ducati frame soda blasted and it was gorgeous. Smooth as can be. The wheels they did with husk because of the texture of the cast wheel and it did a fabulous job. Nothing left behind and smoothed over most of the harsh transitions

Definitely sold me on media over sand
 

Latest posts

Back
Top