Tonight I have been mostly

[Adrian Southgate]

Being wheely busy...

So them 'chelsea tractor' rims went from being shiny chrome when they arrived to rusty in a very short space of time. Seems they had been polished with some really abrasive material which had removed the outer chrome part of the plating leaving highly polished steel rim in places. Now this looked nice until they got wet but after washing they started to brown up and soon had rusty bits all around the outer part of the rim.

This is somewhat unappealing so I decided to fix them...

 

Thats the front... The rusty bits looked like chrome but were just polished steel.

and thats the back. Messy...

The backs covered on 'dirt' including oil, brake dust and road dust.

Angle grinder with a wire brush made short work of that muck.

 

Back to metal, some of it chrome, some of it is just steel.

Turns out the 'rivets' are plastic and melt quite easily under the wire brush in the grinder... oops. As I had already damaged a few by accident I took them all off, both sides. I'll drill the remainder and replace with something else, they are non functional so as long as the replacements dont rust they'll be fine.

I had a few tins of random paint so I primed the back and then sprayed it with wheel silver.

 

Its a flat silver but should suffice to seal the metal from the environment for a while, better than crud brown anyhow. The overspray on the tyre isn't important as they are being binned in favour of a couple of 225/60/15 pirelli's which have a lot more tread depth, the existing ones are 225/50/15 so there will be a size difference but to be honest as I don't actually have a working speedo it's not going to make a whole lot of difference.

The fronts had the outer rim masked off and the centres primed and then painted with ford slate blue, which is fairly close to the body colour. I've just put one coat on for tonight as I'm possibly going to get some different colour paint tomorrow. They are not going to last as the chrome has visibly deteriorated in places and they are just going to rust as soon as they get even the slightest whiff of damp. The only solution I can think of is a coat or two of clear lacquer over the whole wheel, maybe after i've given them a buff with a mop to bring the steel up shiny.

 

[Adrian Southgate]

I got my rear wheels back last night and spent a little while fitting forty+ M6x12 A2 dome heads to them to fill the little holes. The end result now re-fitted to the car looks a little big however 225/60/15's would do on such a small car...

It drives much better as the extra tyrewall means a drop in pressure is available so down to 22psi now.

Now to strip, clean and paint the fronts to match...

[Adrian Southgate]

I have a few on the go already.

4 x 13x8

4 x 14x5.5

  

[Dave Thomas]

Ive got five Wellers here that need refurbishing if you find yourself at a loose end at any time Ade :-)

[Adrian Southgate]

Looks like it will have to be brush on lacquer too as they are now in the capable hands of ATS until monday.

Once complete i'll stick these on the back and get the other two done before putting them on the front. I'll have matching wheels again. 

[Dave Taylor]

I'm here in that there London, well Shepherds bush to be more precise.
Uni visiting with our Charlotte.
Back to flatting down the Phaeton later today.

[Dave Adams]

oooh a wheel re-furbisher in the club......mine will be in the post soon..... ;-)