Well, I already did a search on this and read through every post, but could not find anything about Champion's RG5 lips clear-coat peeling. All four of my wheels the clear coat but only on the lips is pitted or peeling excessively.

So I am going to wet sand them down to the metal and polish them up real good. Should I leave them bare and polish them all of the time, or should I get some clear coat paint to protect the lips?

 

I have an imperfection on the lip of one of my RS97s as well. It's small, but you can feel it if you run your hand across it... I just feels like the clear coat "chipped".

 

Always clearcoat - otherwise, you will pick up stains very quickly and your wet sand/polish will go to waste.

 

All four wheels makes me think you maybe using something to strong to clean them.

 

Pictures needed first

Depending on what it is you're doing you "might" be better off using Nitromors or similar

Like I said though, get some pictures up so we can see what's going on

 

QFT! I did this project on my RG5's last year, and used a sealant that hot-rod guys use for billet ALu on things like supercharger intakes.

To make a long story short it did not work well for rims, that are not on a show car.

Make sure you clear the lips. Also the Champion factory clear is quite robust and will take forever to sand off.

If I had to do it again, I would just have them professionally refinished.

Tom

 

My wheels are still bare and uncoated at the minute (with Collinite 845 wax)
But I haven't been out in the car yet to see how they hold up

If I were you I'd use some paint stripper on the rims instead of wet sanding them
Just be careful not to get in on the centres or the tyres

You'll find the rims will already be mirror polished
If you can get the clearcoat off without sanding it you'll have much less work to do when it comes to final polishing

Just my opinion

 

Well, here is a picture of the rear wheel. As you can see the clear coat is coming off, but the centers are perfect and no clear coat issues.

I wanted to actually strip the clear coat and polish them to a shine and leave them un-coated, but was not sure how much of a pain they would be to keep shiny. I don't mind trying to re-clear coat them, but have limited places to get a good clear-coat here in Hawaii. I tried to order some Wurth high clear gloss lacquer, but they won't ship it here to Hawaii through the online vendors since it comes in an aerosol can.

 

I'm not suprised the centres are still ok

Since the rims are polished they're very smooth, meaning the clear coat has very little to adhere to - The surface is too 'slippery' for the paint to grip to it

As your wheels are mono piece (not split rims) I'd say just polish them and leave them bare - mono piece wheels are easy to look after

If they do begin to oxidize it'll happen very slowly and it'll be easy to polish them up again, it's not like they go from looking amazing to looking pitted and corroded over night - Just make sure you look after them

As far as sanding them - don't bother
Just spend some time taping the wheels up and carefully apply paint stripper to them, then polish them up

DO NOT GET PAINT STRIPPER NEAR THE CENTRES!!!
If you do you'll **** them up

 

I had a set of HRE wheels on my Audi that had bare Alum outer rim sections, the centers were clear coated. I hated them for the problems they were to keep looking good. It seemed that every time I drove in the rain the brake dust would form a glue like substance that would almost fuse to the bare Alum. I had the wheels refinished and cleared then the problem went away.

 

Agreed on the brake dust
It is a nightmare if it beds itself to the rim!

So far though, I've been using Collinite 845 on my wheels and haven't had any issues with brake dust

I'll let you know if/when that changes