Chrome wheels?

Anyone ever had the aluminum wheels on their maxim chromed? If so, any pics? I was thinking about doing it if I can find somewhere that isn't 500bones for the job.

 

You would have to smooth out all the rough casting yourself, or the cost would be really high- - that would seem to take hours, or would you chrome right over the rough surface?

A cheaper way would be powder coat "chrome" paint like. . .

 

Real nickel chrome will be outRAGEOUSLY expensive. Powder-coating in that kind of volume ain't gonna be cheap either. You're probably looking at right around your $500 mark with powder coating, real chrome will be 3X that trust me.

 

Why would someone entirely chrome a bike like that?

It not attractive.

 

I found some sites on the internet that will chrome harley mag wheels for around 500, so I figured it wouldn't be to much more for the xj wheels. It would take a while to polish the rough surface enough to chrome (but I have alot more time than money). There is guy here in Cary, NC that said he would do the "chrome" powdercoat for $200 (I think he is looking for buisness), but I would still have to do some major polishing and sanding before they would look good. I didn't know what the powdercoat would look like, but looking at the picture above, it looks good to me. Right now my rims are beedblasted and clear coated.

Another question that I think I know the answer to: Anyone ever put spoke wheels on an xj. I know it could be done on the front, but don't see how it could on the back.

 

The answer is YES !! but I don't know the year Virago 750 late 80's spoke rims. And there was another way of doing the "chrome" paint that didn't involve powder coat, but a flow on epoxy paint. It looks like chrome unless you are a foot away, good enough for a bike.

I found some more "bling" at WalMart in the crafts section. One of my bikes has chrome allen bolt caps. A bag of 100 chrome discs is $1.00 !! Many different sizes. Just glue on with black RTV.

 

You can just polish the wheels up instead and imitate chrome that way... All you will need is lots of sandpaper in different grades, metal polish compound and a dremel with buffing bits.

Then maybe a protectivle coat you can spray one, but not sure what you could spray on that would stick.

 

I put a spoked XS650 rear wheel on my XJ550. You just have to widen the slot on the swingarm to fit the axle. I haven't researched the front wheel swap yet. Virago 750, 920 are a bolt on, so I'm told. XS650's might. Newer Virago 250s are 18" but might be narrow.

 

I looked at chroming the wheels on my X-chopper and found out the price was really high. As well, the plater said that chroming aluminum wheels could not be guaranteed because of the flexing problems with that type of wheel. He suggested buffing them and showed me how to do it myself as it was really time consuming. I put over 100 hours on both wheels over the winter and the result was impressive. I'm not finished buffing them but hope to do it this winter...if I get motivated (they were a real pain!!). I have some other pictures in my gallery if you're interested.