General Refurbing Wheels

[frupi]

With our old Mazda MX5, we too had the first set of wheels replaced under warranty after 3 years, the only car we've ever bought where this has been a real issue by the way. The second set were almost as bad after the following 3 years at which point the six year warranty with Mazda was up anyway. Though they did replace the two rear quarter panels just two months from the six year anti perforation warranty expiring and that saved us a cool £2.5k !!

 

[alexGS]

I don't know what the prevailing climate is in NZ, but in the UK I don't think DC alloys are a practical long term proposition.

Personally, once the finish goes, I'd just have them stripped & powder coated. At the time of my friend's experience, the local merc dealer routinely powder coated similar wheels on just about all of their used SLK's.

You might want to read this - the video is worth watching too.

Thank you - that was useful information. Particularly as even though they can re-cut the wheel, they choose to paint it instead. I wish we had a wheel refurbishment facility of that grade in NZ!

I'm polishing my alloys - gives an 'old school' look - I shall give them a clearcoat but it will be interesting to see how well it lasts. It might be better to leave them uncoated. I think a bare polished alloy surface is surprisingly durable if regularly maintained (as in, cleaning and a light polish by hand every few months). The clearcoat finish is maintenance-free - until it flakes, and then since it holds the water against the wheel, it will be all downhill from there.

We don't have salt on the roads, which helps.

-Alex

 

[alexGS]

Ok - here's the wheel as received from the 'expert' - I wasn't happy with the rounding-off on the spokes - makes it look all distorted...

 

[alexGS]

Now it's working here are the other photos:

1 Wheel before stripping
2 Stripping
3 After pressure washing
4 During wet-sanding (400 grit, 2000 grit) - near the left of the frame, you can see some of the scratches left by the specialist

(Well, sort of working - it's taken half an hour to upload the pics )
-Alex

 

[alexGS]

And then it was time to get out the Mothers metal polish, DA polisher, and microfibre pad. Now I'm getting some feeling of progress

I'm uploading this from the iPhone as I can't get it onto the Mac - it has just updated itself from iPhoto to Photos, Airdrop has stopped working, and photo sharing in the cloud won't turn on

Now all I have to do is clean inside the holes and paint them, then clean off the top surface again and clearcoat. And the other three wheels, I suppose - so five days should cover it

-Alex