So the wheel furb has begun!

Whipped the wheels off today and gave them a good old fashioned heart and soul clean, getting off 10 odd years of caked on brake dust on the inside! Plus i tapped out a little ding on one of the inside rims

The result was this:

Fuzzy's currently sitting on my spare steels, gives it an interesting change of image, sits a wee bit lower on them too

The steels will be up for sale after i've finished this refurb so if anyone wants them drop me a pm- loads of tread left on the tyres

So first thing this morning i popped down the road to rsr tyres and got them to strip down the wheels, £10 and a packet of chocolate hobnobs later:

Then the fun part

Much sanding!

Result:

About 3 hours later, i decided to do a test coat on a wheel to get an idea for the shade i'm using , and here it is:

My old man reckons its too dark, but i think its about right.

Opinions?

Cheers

Tim

Sorry to saturate this with pics of wheels, but hey ho its all thats happening atm!

Today's event: Further sanding, not too much though, just removing major gouges here and there.

I wasn't quite happy with the finish on the test wheel so i took it back in places and also applied some expoxy filler to the chips here and there as well as trying to sand out the worst of the kerbing on the other wheels:

Filler:

Any comments welcome

I should be able to get the rest of the painting done tomorrow, weather permitting, if not i'll set up a wee booth in the garage

:biggrin:

Edited 16 February, 201016 yr by dirt_monkey

the overall finish looks nice mate!

any plans on lowering?

Yeah i should have some 40mm springs coming my way when a mate of mine gets his coilies, fingers crossed

wheels look a good colour but dont think you should use the ripspeed centres.

and it would look stacks better wit out that DUB sticker

wheels should look good once there on

Ripspeed Centres! PAH!

They're R32 centre caps chum!

The dub badge will be coming off in no time

Ripspeed Centres! PAH!

They're R32 centre caps chum!

The dub badge will be coming off in no time

ha ha only glanced at it and thought it was ripspeed lol !!! second glance they do look pretty cool :-)

cool mate

Ok just finished lacquering em up, they really really do sparkle, the pic doesn't do them justice:

Unfortunately they wont be going on til next week when i get my tyres :(

Edited 17 February, 201016 yr by dirt_monkey

have the wheels sorted out for the meet then mate :) you coming down on the 21st to southampton? your steels still look better as i haven't seen the finished item yet IMo

yeah should do, i'm absolutely itching to get them on the car!

PIH should be a laugh, although it'll be sitting on the steels unfortunately :(

Yo matey, wheels looking good, I am looking at refurbin my old valver wheels. Got a few Q's for you if you dont mind.

How did you get all the brake dust crap off?

How much did you sand down? Till bare metal or just take the laquer and a layer of paint off?

You use any primer or not needed? Can I spray the new colour straight onto the wheel?

Cheer matey! And drop fuzzy on her ass!

Happy to help man!

1.- give the wheels a good ol clean once they're off the car, using meths/sticky stuff remover on the really stubborn stuff

2. sanding- whatever doesn't come off with solvents will come off with sandpaper! You only need take the surface paint off really, don't bother going all the way back to the metal unless you want polished rims, that way you needn't re prime them.

Once you've keyed it back use a fine sand paper to smooth it off- just to get rid of the major gouges left by more abrasive stuff

3. Once this is all done, start spraying! leave a good hour between coats, and put the wheels somewhere toasty to "bake", i put a halogen heater in a small bathroom and used it like an oven inbetween coats. Aim for at least 3 or 4 coats of paint, but the later ones only need to be for the purpose of

evening it up

Stick on a couple of layers of clear lacquer to finish and thats it!

I ended up using three 300ml tins of paint - BMW "Sparkling graphite" and 1 tin big tin of lacquer, so about £25 quid all in tops.

The expensive part is getting the wheels built up again- some places charge £10 a corner!

I wouldnt reccomend spraying without prepping because that will peel off in a couple of months

Hope that answers your questions!

Nice one! Sounds like a good weather job!

BTW tins? U mean spray cans right?

LOL

yeah halfords rattle cans ftw!

HI5!

yea that BMW "Sparkling graphite is a nice finish i used that for spraying some parts of my interior! be nice once wheels are on and hopefully getting them springs

good updates here bro. can see alot of effort going into this project :)

Aye i'm dead chuffed with the finish, looks really really sparkley with the lacquer on! Cant wait to get them built up and on the car, roll on next week!

wonder what they would look like machine polished. ?

like the angel eyes too....

I was tempted, but didnt have the money/attention span/tools!

I need to get some HIDs in there, the normal bulbs look really yellow in comparison to the sidelights and they're really dim. Maybe next month..

Thought i'd make use of the good weather today for a bit of self whoring:

A wee slip on the hue map on psp x2 gave me this ... 100% by accident!

How much is a respray these days? :p

The R caps are a well nice little touch

I know, i almost went for wolfsburg ones but i decided my car wasn't old school enough ( my dad had a 895cc wolfsburg mk1 as his first car lol)

Ok so stuck a new filter on today as the old PPX cone was knackered:

I know its jap style but 1- it was cheap 2-It fits in the gap nicely 3-the colour matches!

It'll do until i can afford a Viper