Pic of the Day

Since I got the car into a more assembled and complete state, I've finally had some time to focus on getting the wheels done.  Over the last few weeks I've sandblasted all the centers down to bare metal in preparation for powder coat.  Last Friday, with the help of a few friends, we got all 4 waffles and 2 centers done.  I brought them home and was excited to get crackin on them Saturday morning. 

I tried my best to document things well, but I was only partly successful in that regard.  Before beginning reassembly, I did a bunch of research online, and stumbled onto this tutorial, which was awesome.  Anything I don't show here and then some can be seen in the tutorial. 

I started with a recently polished lip, a freshly powder coated center and waffle and an untouched but clean barrel. 

You can see the residue of the old silicone in the close up shots.  The first step was to remove all this, so I used some Goo Gone, a razor and some sandpaper.  

This is the only shot I have of the mounting surfaces all cleaned up and ready to go.  This was right before I began applying the new silicone.

I ran two thin beads of silicone around the mating surface on the back of the face, seated it on the barrel, then did the same thing for the front side of the face before affixing the lip.  After that I inserted the bolts, applied a small dab of Loc-Tite to each nut and torqued each down in a star pattern.  No good pics of this either, I was too busy workin! 

I quickly came to realize I used too much silicone.  As i torqued the bolts down a fairly large amount was being squeezed out.  This was not a big deal on the back, but on the front it got everywhere and was a pain to clean up...about 2 hours worth.  I should also mention that once everything was torqued down I ran a thick bead of silicone around the outer edge of the wheel where the mating surfaces meet.

 This is post clean-up, pre-polish.

Here it is fully cleaned up and polished, pretty pleased how it turned out.  Powder was Eastwood Argent Silver. 

All that is left is to put a final polish on the two front lips and powdercoat the 2 remaining centers.  I should have enough time to get all that done and assemble the final three wheels before next weekend and H20, hopefully.

-Ethan

These have always been an all-time favorite. 

-Ethan