Refinishing Factory Rally WheelsNo matter what brand of '60's or '70's muscle car you may own, the factory option Rally Wheels can become a bit edgy looking over the years. With a few simple tricks you can repaint your wheels at home.
Added Oct 1, 07 by eastwoodco
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No matter what brand of '60's or '70's muscle car you may own, the factory option Rally Wheels can become a bit edgy looking over the years. Thin factory paint, road grime and salt can take its toll. With a few simple tricks you can repaint your wheels at home using Eastwood products.
The wheels we chose to use in this exercise are 1972 Pontiac Rallye II five spoke wheels. The wheels came originally in a very dark gray and argent silver with chrome lug nuts. Our wheels are from a reasonably low mileage car, but being from the upper mid-west they were already showing their age with some rust and dull paint.
1) We first dismounted the wheel from the car, then remove the stainless steel trim ring and emblem center cap from behind.
2) Since we did not have tire-changing equipment, a local tire store dismounted the tire for us. Be sure to remove old valve stems and all wheel weights before going any further.
3) We then sandblasted all the old paint and rust from the wheel. A home sandblasting cabinet is a wonderful tool and Eastwood has several units to choose from. If it is impractical to do your own sandblasting, take your wheels to a local blaster by checking your Yellow Pages. Make sure they do not use too high of pressure or coarse of blasting abrasive as you can end up with a very coarse finish.
4) Once clean, be sure to blow off any abrasive residue and wipe with a clean rag. Any abrasive will show up in your paint.
5) We used Eastwood's Self-Etching Primer (Item 16014Z) for our first coat. It does not take much of this excellent primer to give you a top-level secure finish for your final coats.
6) Once thoroughly dry, we then switched to Eastwood's Argent Silver Wheel paint, (Item 10001Z). Shake the can thoroughly to mix the metallic pigment in the can and spray in several light coats to avoid runs. Optimum temperature for painting with the product is 70-90 degrees. Do not attempt to use spray paints that have been sitting in a cold car or garage just prior to use. If so, warm up your paint can by sitting it in a pan of warm water. Wipe the can off so no water drips onto your painted surface. Paint the entire wheel, even though the Rallye wheel was originally a two tone color scheme.
7) Allow plenty of time for the first color coat to dry so nothing is lifted during the masking process. The Pontiac Rallye II wheel has the inner area of the hub and spokes painted the darker color, with the outer area of the relief area of the spoke and the wheel rim remain silver. You can spend hours masking off the spoke relief with tape and an X-Acto brand knife, or you can do it the easy-way with a pre-cut mask diecut. In our case we used the Rally II die-cut mask (10191 & 10192). The cost is quite low, especially when you consider what your time is worth. Apply the mask to each spoke and then connect each diecut with conventional masking tape and paper to protect the wheel rim.
8) Once masked you can then apply the darker color, in this case Eastwood's Satin Black Wheel paint (part 10133Z).
9) Once dry, remove your mask and remount your tires with proper balance and new valve stems.
10) Reinstall the stainless steel trim ring, center cap and mount on the car. In our case we found that 20 new stainless steel capped lug nuts made the final touch in freshening up our wheels. The old nuts were tarnished, rusty and in some cases switched to conventional lug nuts.
There you have it! One of the simplest ways to dress up your car, by refurbishing the OEM wheels to look factory new. This would be a great time to add that special set of OEM red line tires you have may been thinking about.
Recent Comments (1 total):
| rwheels - Aug 18, 2009 3:53 am | |||
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