The Complete Process Of My Wheel Detailing

[AMC74Hornet@xxxxxxxxx (Mr. AMC)]

I found out these Turbine style wheels are Western wheels 14X8 but the
offset was deeper on 2 of them. The deeper ones were on the front of the
car when I bought it causing a tire rub problem which is now cured. The
wheels are not polished but semi gloss clear coated aluminum so Tom's
suggestion of just painting everything and wiping off the excess paint
on the ribs off with a rag with thinner on would not have worked. The
wheels were really grungy and needed to be cleaned very carefully with
thinner so as to remove the grime but not the clear coat, what a pain.
Next I sanded in between each rib with 400# open cut aluminum oxide sand
paper. Next I masked the wheels up with 3M blue fine line masking tape.
Each rib and the outer wheel edge and the center. Then I painted the
wheel with SEM self etching primer. I then again sanded the wheel with
the 400# sand paper. Next I painted the wheel with Sherman Williams
acrylic enamel the orange body color. Unmask the wheel and clean up any
over spray, now mask the tire up and scuffed the wheel and the orange
paint with 1000# sand paper and then painted the whole wheel with
Eastwoods semi-gloss clear. I added new chrome lugs and washers,
polished the chrome center mounting adapter for the knock off's and
added my polished knock off's with the custom AMC's emblems. They came
out beautiful. One problem did arise after I installed the first wheel.
I had already painted the brake drum with black engine paint. When
installed I could see the inner part of the wheel, the brake drum was
not large enough to hide the reducer cleaned stained aluminum. I removed
the wheel and sanded it with 400# sand paper and used a 2" paint brush
to paint it black. Now the inner part of the wheel is invisible. I am
going to start on the front 2 wheels today. With some tricks I learned
along the way with the 2 back wheels I should be able to cut the time to
do the front wheels by 1/3 at least. This may seem like a lot of over
kill preparation  work just to paint the orange between the ribs on the
wheels but I plan on only doing it once. I don't plan on seeing any
paint chipping or pealing in my life time.
"Doc"