Lude Generation

Hey all

I can give you the short story, cut to the chase and you don't quite get the full picture; or i can give you the long story with pics and you get the idea of the full puzzle

So my car looks like this just now:




As you can see, it is currently running on the most ghastly set of 18's known to man. They are in terrible condition, are made (by Binno???!!!) of plastic, and only fit for e-bay

They also are running uneven tyre profiles (40 rear, 35 front!) which means i can't get ATTS fixed until i get even tyres all round. Goes without saying that ATTS NEEDS to be fixed asap. I have a number of costly issues with the car that need sorted (clutch and flywheel getting fitted next week, brakes need attention, MOT etc) and so cash is extremely tight.

I have a set of spanking Work Meister S2R's that i plan to run as summer wheels but i want to get high performance tyres for these and at the moment can't afford them due to the necessities getting fixed first. Also, by the time i get around to affording the new tyres in a couple of months, there wont be much point in running them as Winter won't be far away and as my back up Winter wheels have no tyres either, i won't be able to afford a set of tyres for these as well!!

So my current plan is to refurb my Winter wheels on the cheap (DIY!) buy a decent set of tyres for these and just run them until next summer. Phew, glad that is it all explained

Now to the feedback bit

As you can see from the pics, the car has a bit of a Nordic Mist/black theme.

The wheels i am trying to refurb are cheap, cost me buttons on ebay and i have had my moneys worth out of them. And are gonna be winter wheels after all, so will take a bit of hammering up here in Scotland, and i drive my car every day

Wheels i am refurbing:


As you can see they are diamond cut, and corroding quite badly now. However, i have taken some 240 grit sandpaper to them with the following result:



I have sanded down 4 out of the 5 "quadrants" to give an idea of how it would look. I reckon this took me about an hour and with a few finer grits could get it looking pretty sharp. Has anyone run self polished wheels and if so what were your results? Did they stay polished for long? Or not worth the effort?

However, i also had the cunning plan of painting the silver bits on the wheel to match the body colour. Any thoughts on how this might look? I reckon it might work quite well? Especially with a black centre-cap and body coloured "H"? Tie-in with the NordicMist?black theme? I also quite like the appeal of being unique

All thoughts greatly appreciated

I ran polished rims before, but they were lacquered.. where the lacquer had peeled off, they corroded/oxidised.

How about painting the outer polished bit black and the black middle bits nordic blue? ...there are some photoshop wizards on here, maybe someone can help you out with a couple of mock-ups.

I polished my sawblades up, no lacquer.
These are my Winter wheels.



After one particularly harsh Winter. Plenty of salt on the roads.







It didn't take much to polish them up again. They fared better this year.

Deffo lacquer them or be prepared to give them some extra lovin'. My polished lips were heavily corroded so I sanded them. I didn't lacquer them and they are heavily corroded again. I'm painting my wheels and getting rod of the polished lip.

Anyway, yeah lacquer them

I couldn't find a lacquer that would 'stick' to the polished surface and be hard-wearing.

^^ True dat, I found this when trying to lacquer my bombed wing.

I need to polish my lips up

Thanks guys for your input

I have set my heart on the painting route as with the correct primer/paint/lacquer/wax i am hoping they could fare a bit better

So wish me luck

Is there a 'how to' on polishing/ removing oxidisation from rims?

rob quilter wrote:Is there a 'how to' on polishing/ removing oxidisation from rims?

I did a 'how to' when I polished up my sawblades. It may give you a few ideas.

http://www.ludegeneration.co.uk/honda-p ... 71-10.html