South West Bikers | Motorcycle Forum

was thinking about either polished or chromed wheels, does anybody know a company that can do this ??

The place I use would charge you around £200 to polish just the rims ( front and rear) then you'd need to have the centres painted complete service for around the £280 mark depending on choice of paint.
You can have the rims polished and the centres powdercoated, front would be around the £120 mark, rear around the £160 mark. To have the whole wheel including spokes polished is very expensive, and a pain to keep looking good.
Chroming can lead to problems of embrittlement, so I don't tend to have wheels chromed. Stock cast wheels polish up well, but will start to dull quickly, Forged wheels polish up really well and tend to stay good for longer. Clean them once a week with Belgom Alu polish and then go over with Rimwax and they'll stay looking good, try not to let water stay on them for too long after washing.

I would have thought chrome would add extra weight and extra unsprung weight on a gsxr is a very very bad thing as you dont need to alter the weight of wheels much to make a difference to your bikes handling.

leave your wheels plain black, it looks more purposefull. leave chroming and polishing for the harley crowd.

Feckin Hell!!!! Jam who do you use to get ripped off with that sort of price just for polishing the rims? that price must be the most expensive i've ever heard of just for a set of rims

get them powder coated. Looks good, very tough finish and really easy to clean.

It seems expensive but when I have rims polished, the company I use does not disturb the original factory finish on the rest of the wheel, so once the rim is polished the wheel does not need to be repainted afterwards. There is a sharp finished edge left where the polish finishes, it is very time consuming to make sure the factory finish is not damaged that's why it costs more. When I build a bike for someone I use top quality companies for everything, not just the cheapest. Same with powdercoating, there are many companies out there offering to powdercoat your parts cheaply, but I only use a company in Bristol who specialise in motorcycle powdercoating, which is why I'm happy to let them powdercoat crankcases for me, knowing that every gasket surface will be masked correctly and that there will be no blasting media left anywhere. Ya pays ya money ya takes ya chance, a local company that only charges £30 per wheel to powdercoat it seems cheap until you have to spend an hour and a half chasing out all the threads, and cleaning up all the bearing seats and discs mounting faces because they have not been masked off.

My ZX636 wheels were had mirror polished rims and painted green centre and spokes.. they looked stunning after I spent about 2 hours hand polishing them with AutoSol.. but one ride later and they are covered in crap straight away..

jam wrote:It seems expensive but when I have rims polished, the company I use does not disturb the original factory finish on the rest of the wheel, so once the rim is polished the wheel does not need to be repainted afterwards. There is a sharp finished edge left where the polish finishes, it is very time consuming to make sure the factory finish is not damaged that's why it costs more. When I build a bike for someone I use top quality companies for everything, not just the cheapest. Same with powdercoating, there are many companies out there offering to powdercoat your parts cheaply, but I only use a company in Bristol who specialise in motorcycle powdercoating, which is why I'm happy to let them powdercoat crankcases for me, knowing that every gasket surface will be masked correctly and that there will be no blasting media left anywhere. Ya pays ya money ya takes ya chance, a local company that only charges £30 per wheel to powdercoat it seems cheap until you have to spend an hour and a half chasing out all the threads, and cleaning up all the bearing seats and discs mounting faces because they have not been masked off.

the company down here - first choice finishes - mask of all threads and bearing housing, all the disc mounts are covered. the wheels come back all ready for tyres, discs and bearings.

plus we get dicount there

cheers guys, and the reason i want to polish them is the paint is flaking on spots,

and about letting the water sit on the wheels, my bike gets parked outside due to me living in a flat in the middle of a town therefor i have no shed or garage, and tbh when i get home after riding miles i can never really be bothered to put my cover on .