I use the mothers power cone on the chrome on my motorcycle. It works absolutely fantastic. My bike has a lot of chrome and It can go from a filthy mess to a mirror shine in well under an hour.
Once tarnished bad I've not found a good way to truly bring back the luster to as-new. My alumimun Micky Thompson wheels were tarnished really bad. I wet sanded them for hours, then took a variety of polishes to them using a power ball. They turned out OK but not great. They are still a little dull.
I used everything from the expensive bottle of mothers powerball cleaner to blue magic, never dull etc.... I had my best luck with rubbing compound then finishing with polishing compound. I had bought some rims from a member on here that we're toast. I had them almost looking chrome.
Here is a pic of the rims I did .. These things were absolute toast. Full of pits and looked painted silver. I bought them from Mr Clean on here and he told me they where never cleaned and driven through every winter and on the trail. Took a lot of work...
I've used Autosol creme on some rims using extra fine scotch brite pads to get rid of the worst of the tarnish, then hit it with a powerball and autosol again. Quite a bit of work, but it turns out excellent. I don't have any good pictures on my phone or I would post em...
i use scratch x to do the rims on my ram every couple years, prety easy to use and good results, never used the poweball, but by had i have all of them done in about two hours. I had a tube of Flitz laying around for years so I tried that after last year, my rims still look good a year later and one winter. i think i washed my truck like twice this winter.
I like the power ball, I use mothers mag&aluminum polish. Takes a lot of elbow grease but works amazing. There is no fast or easy way to do it. To do it right it takes quite a bit of time. 4 wheels took me over an hour, and I still didn't do it as well as I should have. Just one of those things that sucks and takes lots of time.
My buddy at a dealership gave me some acid spray stuff that worked like I have never saw before take shitty looking rims and turn them good again. We just went to car wash, sprayed rims then I power washed off. Then I added a few coats of wheel polish just to protect them but that shit worked like ive never saw any other product do.
I used to hit my aluminum wheels with 4/0 steel wool and aluminum polish to clean them up when they got really bad. That worked really well to get the corrosion off and get them looking decent, then I would follow up with the power ball and more aluminum polish. They would look about as good as new after a few hours of work, but it was well worth it IMO.
If you want to acid wash the rims, look for a Big Rig truck wash... They'll likely do them for you. Think of all the aluminum on transports. I know that of you don't polish it soon after, the aluminum turns all milky looking.
I have had good luck with fine grit sandpaper and Wd-40 to get the aluminum "clean" then finish with mothers aluminum polish and a powerball
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