Rim Job
07-06-06, 07:11 PM
#1
Pole Position
Thread Starter
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: NS, Canada
Posts: 283
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Rim Job
Well the weather has been cooperating and I’ve found some time to do some work on the car. This is one of many ongoing projects slated for the car, and this one involved rejuvenating the chrome wheels. Well, the rear lips anyhow. The fronts are now polished very nicely care of some chrome polish. I’ve tried Flitz, Silvo, Autosol and many others. And I’m sorry I didn’t document which ones I started with during the initial proceedings of restoration, because after a good first and second polish, you seem to get no further results no matter which product you use. Consequently I’d rate any of the above chrome polishes equally. Anyway, back to the immediate project.
It seemed the previous owner of these wheels used them as all seasons or didn’t care enough about them to wash them often. Either way the pitting and minor peeling started showing up in the rear wheel lips. And after previous grinding down of the rust and pitting I was left with this to further deal with. Definitely manageable.
And since there was no local shop available for re-plating the wheels (although I’ve been told it would be super expensive to re-plate even if there was, you can fill me in on that one) I went with the least expensive way. Some good old spray paint, albeit with a lot of care, and some newspaper and painter’s tape. I used the Duplicolor Chrome Finish paint, found at our local Canadian Tire hardware store. You see the Duplicolor High Performance Wheel Coating in the pics, but I decided not to use it as it dulled the look of the chrome paint. And since the wheels are exclusively summer wheels, I was going after the best shining finish versus protection properties.
Taping the newspaper to the inner wheel took most of the time on this project, and it was the most annoying. But I wanted to get the wheels right the first time so I endured.
And after a small wait time for drying and peeling the tape off, voila.
I was happy with the way they came out for such an inexpensive fix. Ideally I would have liked either re-plated the wheels or having brand new ones, but I guess paying $5000.00 for new wheels that look a little better would have been silly.
And that’s the project, it’s been about 5 months since I did the project and the paint has held up nicely. I clean the wheels regularly as to avoid really harsh chemicals that may affect the paint or wheel finish in some way or another. Tell me what you think and if you have any questions I’m happy to help out. As you all know there are some people here on CL who really know their $%#*, my hats off to them because they’re always helping us out.
Happy Motoring
Vas
It seemed the previous owner of these wheels used them as all seasons or didn’t care enough about them to wash them often. Either way the pitting and minor peeling started showing up in the rear wheel lips. And after previous grinding down of the rust and pitting I was left with this to further deal with. Definitely manageable.
And since there was no local shop available for re-plating the wheels (although I’ve been told it would be super expensive to re-plate even if there was, you can fill me in on that one) I went with the least expensive way. Some good old spray paint, albeit with a lot of care, and some newspaper and painter’s tape. I used the Duplicolor Chrome Finish paint, found at our local Canadian Tire hardware store. You see the Duplicolor High Performance Wheel Coating in the pics, but I decided not to use it as it dulled the look of the chrome paint. And since the wheels are exclusively summer wheels, I was going after the best shining finish versus protection properties.
Taping the newspaper to the inner wheel took most of the time on this project, and it was the most annoying. But I wanted to get the wheels right the first time so I endured.
And after a small wait time for drying and peeling the tape off, voila.
I was happy with the way they came out for such an inexpensive fix. Ideally I would have liked either re-plated the wheels or having brand new ones, but I guess paying $5000.00 for new wheels that look a little better would have been silly. And that’s the project, it’s been about 5 months since I did the project and the paint has held up nicely. I clean the wheels regularly as to avoid really harsh chemicals that may affect the paint or wheel finish in some way or another. Tell me what you think and if you have any questions I’m happy to help out. As you all know there are some people here on CL who really know their $%#*, my hats off to them because they’re always helping us out.
Happy Motoring
Vas
...ha ha nice job on the wheels.
Thread
Thread Starter
Forum
Replies
Last Post
