How did you refinish the as cast portion of the wheels? Blasting, muriatic acid, or a combination? And what abrasive did you use if bead blasted? I have a blast cabinet coming for my shop that will hold up to a 20" wheel. I may give this a try on a spare set I have lying around. Also curious how you refinished the fins and outer polished edges, as I presume you didn't use a lathe. Thanks.
T-type wheel restoration
- Thread starter ejh
- Start date
87 WE2
Active Member
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2002
The set I did on the 86 was so long ago its hard to recall what exactly I did. The set of wheels I picked up for it were in great shape, from what I recall I stripped what was left of the factory clear coat (do not recall how). I remember masking off the machined fin/lip sections and blasting the cast sections I believe with a soda blaster. After that taped out the cast sections, sanded and polished the fins/lips, then removed the tape from the cast portions and taped out the polished fins/lips and painted the cast sections (spray paint forget what brand/color) You could choose not to paint the cast sections but I decided to to give it a little different look then the cast. After that I pulled the tape off the fins/lips and clear coated the entire wheel several light coats of a satin clear spray paint. It took forever to do I had about 40 some hours into refinishing the wheels but it was less then $100 or so in material to refinish all 4 and I was happy how they came out.
If I were to do it again I would polish the fins/lips up first then tape then good with thick tape and take more time blasting the cast sections. If done correctly it may save time in re-masking the sections and speed the process up. Also you could potentially powder coat the wheel in clear as it sits in this state.
Its all in the prep after polishing the paint has to stick you do not want polishing residue in the bare cast sections, same for powder coat. I practiced on a junk wheel and found what worked for me and moved onto the set I wanted refinished.
Taping out the sections is the worse part and a royal paint in the butt, very tedious....
Having them done by a company such as Wheels America with a lathe is faster because you can blast the wheel, machine it, and clear it in a 1/4 of the time it takes to do them by hand and they will last much longer with the powder coat. The issue is there seems to be differences on each factory wheel and the way it was machined originally. There has to be enough meet on the wheels fins to be refinished correctly with a lathe if there is not enough material in the fins when its cut it will dig into the cast sections and machine them also. Usually we see out of a set of 4 wheels typically at least one wheel is off and wont work due to being machined more then the others originally. Refinishing them by hand is a way around this.
Hope that makes sense?
If I were to do it again I would polish the fins/lips up first then tape then good with thick tape and take more time blasting the cast sections. If done correctly it may save time in re-masking the sections and speed the process up. Also you could potentially powder coat the wheel in clear as it sits in this state.
Its all in the prep after polishing the paint has to stick you do not want polishing residue in the bare cast sections, same for powder coat. I practiced on a junk wheel and found what worked for me and moved onto the set I wanted refinished.
Taping out the sections is the worse part and a royal paint in the butt, very tedious....
Having them done by a company such as Wheels America with a lathe is faster because you can blast the wheel, machine it, and clear it in a 1/4 of the time it takes to do them by hand and they will last much longer with the powder coat. The issue is there seems to be differences on each factory wheel and the way it was machined originally. There has to be enough meet on the wheels fins to be refinished correctly with a lathe if there is not enough material in the fins when its cut it will dig into the cast sections and machine them also. Usually we see out of a set of 4 wheels typically at least one wheel is off and wont work due to being machined more then the others originally. Refinishing them by hand is a way around this.
Hope that makes sense?
