Fred,
A guy that I know built an all out mega buck Cobra here a few years back and had his whole wheels and everything on the thing did in 24 karat gold. I was down talking to him and he was just running water from a hose over the wheels easy to rinse off any dust. The gold also came off and flowed into the drain. Of course the guy that did the gold work claimed the place that prepped them didn't do it right and back and forth. I think they had to remove all of the chrome and put a nickle based finish on for the gold to stick to. He never did get those wheels to stand up well as the gold just kept falling off. Based on that I believe I would be more tempted to have them anodized.
Ron
