The wheels I currently have on my 944 are the same rims I'm assuming came with the car off the lot back in '86. When I bought the car from a guy in Bozeman in 2003 (I believe I'm the 3rd owner), the rims looked like hell. There was serious curb rashes on all rims, major chips in each wheel coating, and stubborn markings that wouldn't come off, no matter how much elbow grease I put into them.
Like I wrote in my "Member Cars / Garage" topic, the place I work (during the summer) has both sandblasting and powdercoating available. I talked with my colleagues, and was quoted around $200-300 for all four rims blasted professionally and coated jet black. I ended up learning how to sandblast (due to shortage of employees at the time) and decided to blast my own rims to save on costs.
The sandblasting media they use is not walnut or glass beads, but rather steel. I know many people think this is a no-no when it comes to Aluminum wheels (and I was aware of this when I did it), but it totally beautified my rims, removing any signs of curbing, scratches, chips, etc. But it did take FOUR HOURS PER WHEEL to remove all of the original coating.
I had no issues with pitting, and my rims turned out beautiful after they were powdercoated. To save on costs, my colleague waited to powdercoat my rims until another customer wanted something powdercoated the same color (so they wouldn't have to take actual work time to do this). To make my rims even more scratch/chip/bomb-proof, they sprayed each wheel with a special coating, which I'm not allowed to say (trade secret).
In the end, the grand total to get my wheels as beautiful as they are now was ... $35. This was mostly because of me coming in on weekends to blast my rims. I uploaded some photos of them in my "Garage" topic, but I'll load some more here just to make it easy.
These wheels have managed to stay scratch/chip-free since I had them coated ~5 years ago, but they do get damn dirty being black. I'm not saying that it's okay to sandblast aluminum wheels, but rather it won't always cause pitting, etc.
The photo below shows how they used to look. Sorry about the poor quality, this photo doesn't show the extent of damage to the wheels. Notice the stars are black with a silver rim.
Now they are solid black, except for the lug nuts and center cap (which are ALSO aluminum, and would immediately pit due to their softness!).
