Friday, April 24, 2009

Time to share my car wheel project with you :)

Hello my friends,

As some of you have known that I have been doing my “wheel business” for a while. It took indeed long time on finding rims, collecting tires, selling tires, and so on… I think it’s been 6 or 8 weeks.

Finally it’s all settled, and I think it’s nice to share this experience with you guys. Of course you can use it as a DIY guide if you want J

BUT, I STRONGLY suggest NOT TO DO THIS, unless you have no friends to hang out with during weekends, or really want a challenging “work out” physically and mentally.

Alright, here we go.

1)      The original wheels with dirt and a lot curb rashes :(

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2)      Clean the dirt

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3)      Slightly sand the surface around curb rashes

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4)      Use paint thinner to remove the grease and a bit old clear paint

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5) Use some filler to fill the curb damages. I used epoxy putty, my god this thing stinks and hard to handle, better use something else :(

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6) Remove the extra putty before sanding

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7) Sand the fixed surface until it becomes smooth

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8) Phew…

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9) Ready to sand the whole surface down. I tried wire brush to do a coarse sanding. But later I found it’s not a good idea, as your arms got tired it’s hard to control and I got some deep scratches :(

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10) Start…

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11) Fine sanding and edge sanding with sand paper, MANUALLY… :(

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12) Finally it’s ready for coating.

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13) Tape and mask the area you don’t want to paint

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14) First of first, twice filler primer

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15) Twice color coating…. Still going ….

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16) Twice clear coating… phew… coating finished here.

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17) Another pic with flash on

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18) It’s ready to get them mounted. I decided to do caliper painting and differential oil change along with it. But I dropped the differential oil change later, as I think there’s a leak and I have to get it checked first

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19) Un-mount the wheels and spray some break cleaner to remove the dirt and grease on the caliper

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20) Do a further clean and sand the surface a bit. ( compare to wheel sanding, this is just a piece of cake :) ) Mask the break disc, as I don’t want to paint the disk

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21) Ready to paint :)

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22) Detail painting with brushes.

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23) Another pic

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24) The caliper paint is so so so thin, I had to paint each caliper three times. This becomes time consuming but it gave you better result. Here it is.

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25)  With old wheels

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26)   With “new” wheels and caliper

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27)  Different angle

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28) Close look

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29) Make sure you have all the protection on during the work :)

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Hope you enjoy this :)

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