I have the original wheels on a 74 chevelle malibu . They are painted blue, but there's rust on them. They appear to be in good shape otherwise. Can anyone give me some advice on the proper procedure to restore them? Thanks!

Blast em, mask em, prime em and paint em.

I like that! Although I've never sandblasted…hence, I don't have sandblasting equipment. I'm assuming that the wheels have to be removed before blastin' them. Anything a bit more specific on the blastin' part? Or is there a "driveway" method that probably takes 5x as long? Or should I just take them to someone who knows what they're doin'?

Yes, need to be removed from car and seperated from tires. If you dont have access to a blaster I would look for a shop in your area to hammer em out. Should be relatively cheap and you wont have to clean up any of the blasting media. Then just grab em from the shop and go to town. Then take em over to the tire shop and have your tires mounted, slap em on the car and go.

I see you are in NJ, some of the NJ area TC'ers might be able to point you to a shop near you that can blast the rims for you...I would wait to see who else responds but thats about the "jist" of it.

You could chemical strip as well but it might get messy and unless you use a bio-degradeable stripper like that which Eastwood offers you might violate some local ordinances.

So in truth, couple of options - have them blasted and then mask and paint yourself or chemical strip, sand, prime, wet sand and paint yourself.

I am getting ready to do this with my 70 SS rallye II's in a month or so just for kicks as I am going to bigger rims to clear new brakes

I bead blasted my rims (basically sand blasting, but with glass beads, and it was in a cabinet)...
I had the tires off, but if the tires are in good shape, I don't see why you couldn't blast with the tires still on...

You have to paint them pretty quickly after the blasting (within a day or so?) or they will start to rust again. So primer will not keep the moisure out.

You could sand them, but its really hard to get the sandpaper in all those areas...