Cleaning up old spokes

[mainline]

Any tricks for doing this without pulling the wheel apart?

[smed]

Our ol mate TonyT put us onto this one, Autosol or The polish of your choice & a pair of those rough textured gloves that chicks use on there skin(Available from chemists & supermarkets,I got a pair from the cheap chinese shop in town), put em on,a bit of polish on the fingers & away you go they wear out pretty quick so grab a couple of pairs

[LWC82PE]

Depends on what sort of spokes they are, you have not mentioned that.
With old dulled up zinc ones you are pretty much wasting your time doing anything other than a good degrease and wash with detergent. Rubbing with any abrasives and polishes will just wear more plating off and promote more corrosion and rust and make them look worse so you are better off to leave them as they are or if you really dont want to strip the wheel then, just clean the spokes and then paint them with some silver paint, but be warned, after spending ages masking everything off that you dont want painted, you will end up think why did i not just strip the wheel and get the spokes re-zinced or replace with new ones. If you read the labels of most metal polishes they will say not to use on zinc coated surfaces as zinc plating is only thin and you just end up rubbing it off. Its not the same as chrome or nickel.
If they are not rust pitted, you can wire wheel the spokes and send them off to a zinc plater and they will come back like new. Its not very expensive.

If you have stainless steel spokes then yeah you can polish them up as much as you like.

[dalesween]

X2, good reply Leith, trying to make old zinc plated spokes look new again is virtually impossible without pulling the wheel apart and getting them replated.

cheers Dale.

[mainline]

Thanks guys, don't kow what they are yet, they're too manky to tell. They're on a 97 ktm300 i've just started rebuilding. I'll have a better look before I go any further. Cheers

[evo550]

If it's KTM they could be painted. My '08 250sx spokes are painted a silver/grey colour

[Mike52]

Someone on this forum a while back mentioned chucking the whole wheel into a wheelie bin with molasses and water 1/9.
Magnesium rims are a no no.

[Graham]

If youre going to cut the old ones out make sure you measure the off set of the hub,ie place wheel on the ground place a  straight edge on the hub then measure down to the rim,do both sides this will help when you come to relace.

[Taka 100]

give FAT-TOY a yell he's onto some stuff that works a treat , i cant remember what he said , im going to have to start writing things down, 

[frank jnr]

Yeah, Mike52, BigK use's the wheelie bin molasses/water brew and works a treat.

[YZ250H]

So you are finally getting into that bike 
Should be a cracker when you are finished - I didn't think there was a lot of money to spend on her to get her "going".
I thought the British beast was the next cab off the rank ??

[chrisdespo]

Velvet soap jex pads and a bit of water rub gently and you would be surprised