99LS wheel finish

[Lexus Itch]

I have alloy wheels on my 99LS. Only one of them is shiny. The other wheels are not, they have some kind of stain, look like you wash them without drying them. Any help?

[SW03ES]

Can you post some pictures? Do all the wheels have a machined finish?

There are a couple of options.

The wheels on the 98-00 LS are machined with a clearcoat. Over time, especially if you use automatic carwashes with wheel brushes, the clearcoat finish becomes buffed, pitted, yellowed, and dull hiding the brilliance of the machined wheels underneath. This USUALLY can be fixed by polishing them with a medium cut compound and an electric polisher, but sometimes its so bad the clear needs to be stripped and resprayed. You'll probably want to replace the wheel center caps after you have this done too (they're plastic, surprisingly). This is why Lexus abandoned machined finish wheels in 2001, they hate components on their cars that don't age well. I think its a shame because the machined wheels are really sharp, providing you properly care for them.

Another possibility is that 3 of the wheels are not 98-00 LS wheels at all but are 97 coach LS wheels. Those wheels were the same design, just painted instead of machined.

Obviously all of ths is dependent on whether or not you've owned the car from new...

This is how the wheel should look:

[SKperformance]

I had the same problem with the second set of stock 98 wheels i bought.

The last owner used acid wheel cleaner and destroyed them .Compared to the car wash ones on the car they looked like garbage. I had more corrosion white ash on the aluminum than i had clear coat. I sanded them down and colour matched them since they where only going to be used for winter tires anyway.

The other thing is SW is right , On my original 98 wheels i used my high speed and a lot of elbow work to remove all the light etching ,yellowing and pitting and they looked amazing after. They really looked so bad my wife accused me of buying rims saying i got rid of the old yellow ones. I had a good laugh after since she was on her way to work at 7am and i spent the night polishing the car and wheels. I am glad it did pay off.

A good detailer or rim re-finisher could do it for you for about $30 -$100 a rim.It all depends if they just polish it or dip it to remove the clear and the polish before clear coating it again.

[Lexus Itch]

Sorry, but how can I paste a picture in here, thanks.

[SW03ES]

You have to post them in the gallery, I'm not sure if you can do that since you're not gold...

There's a link under the posting screen that says "File Attatchments", try that.

[Lexus Itch]

You have to post them in the gallery, I'm not sure if you can do that since you're not gold...

There's a link under the posting screen that says "File Attatchments", try that.

[Lexus Itch]

Oh, My wheel...! :cries:

I have never done any machine polish before, please help me with more details. I saw some polish machines at local Walmart, are they worth to try? Also, what products, steps, ... that I need to do.

Thanks a lot for your super fast replies.

[SW03ES]

Yep, thats the oxidized wheel finish.

What you need is at least a PC, read up on the tutorials posted around here. You can get one for a good price from www.coastaltool.com. If you don't want to mess with that, you could always have a professional do it.

I bet they'll clean up with a good buff.

[SKperformance]

They will clean up after you polish them but they will also need to be protected as that is water marks which happens as the clearcoat ages.

Get a detailer to high speed polish them for about $20-30 for all 4 in about 10 minutes ,then wax them with a nice wheel polish,any will do.

[Lexus Itch]

Thanks you all, I will have my wheels polished by professional detailer. I'll post some new pictures to show you how they look.