There's no good solution. Paint won't stick well to the chrome that's left. The paint will probably flake off not to mention it will probably look like crap where the chrome is peeling to begin with. You can try to clean them as much as you want but it won't make the chrome come back. No money, gotta live with it.

 

Maybe look into getting the worst wheels dipped.

 

Any idea what it costs to have a wheel rechromed? I've always wondered.

 

Generally speaking, it would scare you to death. Said another way, it's far cheaper to buy a used (or even new) wheel.

 

Not sure about today's prices but back in the mid 90's it was $125 for a stock Acura or Mercedes wheel. It would probably be cheaper to have a wheel re-chromed in his case since he said 2 were real bad versus buying 4 new matching wheels.

 

That might have been true back then. I used to supervise a 60,000 square foot plating department for a Fortune 500 company. Our biggest cost was pollution control equipment & its operation. And chrome plating has its own special set of effluent headaches. The costs were silly back then and have only gotten worse. This has driven much of the work offshore (cheaper to pollute in China) and some to lower volume shops that are below the EPA's radar screen. That keeps their costs low and the combination of those two forced us to close our operation.

 

Believe it or not this was in the Bay Area of extremely strict, paranoid California. There were 4 plating shops within a 50 mile radius. I remember getting a very good plating job done on 5 Acura Legend stock spoke wheels for $600. I used to plate all sorts of motorcycle crap...drop the bike and ended up having same parts done more than once at different shops. This is how I learned how different shops and plating methods produced a large differences in appearance and longevity.

 

I got a quote of like $1500 for four 15" wheels up here. :| I went with powdercoating instead.

 

Haha. $1500! That could easily buy new wheels.

 

That would buy a new set of tires and some nice wheels.

 

$375 per wheel buys all kinds of new 20 inch wheels.

Maybe they just didn't want to do it and made up a number. If they really charged like that how much wheel work would they get when it's cheaper to buy new? Even if they catered to vintage custom work with shipping prices I cant imagine getting many vehicles over a period of time that would be worth the expense.

 

That's why I paid like $275 for powdercoating. It's a pretty well known shop in the area for any kind of car stuff. They send 'em out. To where, I have no idea.