corroded wheels

Best bet is sandblast and re-paint, or powder coat. Most tire shops have a contact where they send wheels for this job. If you have access to a sand blaster, you can do it yourself. Search the web for "wheel refinishing" or something like that. Tons of info out there. Good luck.

RS

Good step-by-step on polish/painting wheels here;

I think with alloy wheels, sand is too aggressive. There are other things to blast them with. But you can do these wheels by hand...

The problem with the finish Volvo used on some wheels up to 1987 is only with the clear coat where it was applied to bare alloy. The whole wheel was painted gray, then the top surface has the paint machined off, then the whole thing is clear coated. Where the clear coat is on the bare metal, the coating fails, and corrosion gets under. Because it's only the top surface, hand scraping and sanding is not overly difficult. If you've got more time than money, you can clean this upper surface, and then paint. I got a very nice set of 10 spoke wheels from an early 760 for my '76 245 this way, back when I was young and broke.

A suggestion was made by an earlier poster to sand-blast the wheels. Don't do this with alloy wheels -- they pit really easily.

There's a product I've used on cars that have been prepared for sale, called Flitz. It takes about 10 - 20 minutes to do a wheel. Here's the website that you can read more about it, and decide for yourself.

The two things that you want are: a) Flitz liquid metal polish, and b) Flitz polishing ball (this hooks up to your drill)

Beverly

I've tried sandblasting aluminum items before, the media I use is a white sand made of crushed glass, the problem is aluminum is so soft that it sands away faster than most paints, especially powder coating. A light sandblasting will take off oxidation and very loose flakey coatings but you won't remove the powder coat that way without damaging the wheel.

I suppose we're just quibbling over semantics now, I'd call that glass blasting. I've also seen blasting with walnut shells and various kinds of plastic beads. And whatever you're blasting at aluminum wheels, if you stay too long in one spot, then you can have a problem, so experience is key.