Finally gave the wheels some love. I like black wheels but not the high gloss finish these came with, & when I started grinding powder coating off in chunks they looked even worse. For the first couple years I tried to touch them up after every off road hammering but that got old. It was time to paint over them with a uniform color, & everything I’ve painted thus far has been with Rustoleum black satin, a nice finish between gloss & flat so I went with that.
First step was to pull them off & give them a good scrubbing, shot the wheels with wheel cleaner & the tires with tire cleaner & let it all soak for a while then hit them with hot soapy water & a brush:
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The center caps were cracked with some big hunks of paint missing so the shiny silver plastic underneath was showing in spots plus they were beyond filthy so they went into the soapy bucket for an overnight soak:
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Next day when everything was dry I scuffed them up with 220 sandpaper then cleaned thoroughly with denatured alcohol, then let that all dry out overnight.
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Next day I played the card trick I learned from
@scottgraham & sprayed a coat of primer then two topcoats of paint, then let that dry overnight
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Next day (yesterday) a cold/rain front rolled through & I figured this wasn’t going to help the curing process so I brought them inside & cranked up the pellet stove in the family room & rotated them one at a time onto the
chair of drying, each one got a blast of fan forced stove heat for an hour or so, then I continued to let them all hang overnight.
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the blast zone
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Center caps too, they look like 4 oil filters, you can see the glow of the pellet stove
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Today was the moment of truth, the before:
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and the after:
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it was also the moment of truth for the new lower riding suspension. We had a nasty 1.5 inch downpour yesterday which I figured washed away any residual salt that may have been on the roads so I took the beast out for an extended test drive following the spring rearrangement.
All is well, feels beautiful, sounds beautiful, feels better. No rubbing up front, but to be determined is whether or not my bumpstops are adequate. I think they are, they were before I removed the spacer up front & dropped an inch in the rear, so in my mind I know the tires are all an inch closer to the danger zones but the bump stops are also all an inch closer to full bump so I believe it was a lateral move. I’m not going to cycle the suspension, at least not in the traditional sense, rather I’ll ‘cycle’ it by driving up the ramp next time I’m in the mountains & make sure they’re sufficient.
Took a nice long ride through Chester County horse country, varied speeds, tight/fast curves, lot of bumps, was awesome. Pulled over & took a few shots of the wheel project, gotta say I'm in this whole thing for nine bucks (1 can of spray paint & a two pack of playing cards, I had the sandpaper & primer already) & I can't think of another nine bucks that gave me this much of an impact. Maybe my redneck tire carrier but that's about it.
It was a little overcast so I don't think these shots do real justice to how nice they look in person, but here it is:
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