primer on the underside of the rim was bubbling in a few spots, a problem which looked
like it might migrate to the finished side. I repainted the back side of the wheels only to
pull some of the clear coat off of the finished side when removing the masking. Then I decided to go with powder coat but the color turned out atrocious. I stripped the PC and decided to polish the wheels although I was going for a silver
rather a bright chrome look. Lacking a topcoat, Advans have a rough finish that is
difficult to polish; sheer madness, the kind of stuff Z enthusiasts might have to do in
hell. However, I got them smoothed and polished but could not get the finish I wanted. Did so more PC experimenting which led nowhere. Main problem was I didn't want
something shiny, and early pearl white looks like hell IMHO with anything close to gray.
Thought about paint but figured without the proper treatment the paint would easily chip
off the smooth aluminum. Gave the polishing angle another try; settled on sanding to 600 grit, polishing with
aluminum compound, then knocking down the shine with 3M brown pad which just
barely scratches the metal, followed by wax. Lacking an ideal scratch pattern, the result was not quite perfect, but darn good.
Maintenance may be a headache but maybe I'll Zoopseal them. My car rarely sees rain If I had it to do over again, I would have smoothed the areas I pulled the clear coat off
of, roughed up the paint on the rest of the wheels and sprayed with Nissan KL2 (which I
discovered late in the game) and cleared it (shown here in a test): 
Dang BTW Drylac Bengal Silver PC is pretty close to the original Advan silver: 
. .
 Chance favors the informed
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