Practical Projects 3

Many people suffer from flat tyres or slow punctures from corroded steel wheels, fixing or refurbishing wheels can be extremely expensive at around £50 per wheel from a professional company, but you can do your own for a fraction of the price, yet you can achieve professional results. All that is needed is an angle grinder, a screw on wire brush to fit the angle grinder of around 3" diameter, fine wet and dry paper, paint and lacquer.

Remove the tyre from the rim and inspect for impact damage, if its free of damage then remove any balancing weights and the valve which is sinply cut off from the inside of the rim. Fit the brush to the angle grinder and fully abrade the rim with the brush until it is back to bare metal, remove any deep rust and fill any small imperfections if you prefer, standard body filler is fine as long as it is not on the mounting rim or in the vacinity of the wheel nuts. Prime the entire wheel with standard primer, if you have a compressor and spray gun, fine; if not you can use spray cans. Apply several coats of primer to the outer face of the rim to ensure adequate thickness to sand perfectly flat.

Use an 800 grit wet and dry paper wet and sand back the primer until it is perfectly smooth, wash the entire wheel in clean water and fully dry the rim. Paint the rim in the colour of your choice and allow to dry, use several coats until the finish is sufficiently thick enough to buff.

If you want to change the colour of your rim and use a base and clear system the differences are as follows:

Apply two colour coats, this will give a sufficient depth of colour, but do not sand, basecoat is actually rough when applied and dry to allow the lacquer to adhere to it. Apply at least three coats of lacquer to the basecoat, leave to dry between each coat, apply more if you wish as the basecoat is merely the colour and gives the wheel no protection, its the lacquer which gives the paint its shine and protection.

Once your paint or lacquer is fully dried, depending on your chosen system, buff the rim with a good buffing compound such as Farecla G10 or similar, this brings the lacquer or paint to a lovely shine, wash the rim and fully dry, polish the rim with a good car polish.

Have your tyres refitted and balanced, you will have wheels which look like new, and for a fraction of the price of a profesional refurbishment at a fraction of the price.

Indeed.

I used your above method a while ago on an alloy wheel and it looked good as new for about £20.

Even if you do not have the finances to get them professionally resprayed or even have the time to do it yourself, steel wheels are incredibly cheap to buy new. Land Rover, most Suzuki's and a few Japanese steel wheels rarely go over £40 each. The down side is most are black or white....