Hi People. Just a warning: this resto isnt for the faint hearted
Got these a few months back from oldskooldayz and were paintec red with two pac automotive paint. The pair of them looked like this:
Verry glossy finish on both and had no chips or anything.
I was assured that they were originaly red, so bought them and thought it would be a piece of cake to strip and restore. ( I haven't come accross two pac paint before
)
First thing I did when they arrived, was to try a very soft approach to stripping the paint. I tried nail varnish remover, then very fine wet and dry paper, then dot 4 brake fluid, then a razor blade all with no joy whatsoever
I then thought I would try Nitromorse as it was the only thing left I hadn't tried and also I thought that before the stuff could do any damage to the mags, it would have to get through the paint first. So here is the next step.
I kept checking the wheel every five minuets, just to make sure nothing bad was going to happen, but bugger me after an hour nothing was happening to the paint
I then put more notromorse on and left for another two hours and this is what happened:
the paint was just starting to lift in a few places.....at last
A thought occured to me whilst doing this and that was why someone would paint red tuffs red??? ( this wasnt done be oldskooldayz but someone else)
It was after stripping all the paint, I was left with this:
At first I thought someone has tried to dye them black as the black stuff was all over the pastic hubs and everywhere it looked like they had been sat on the side of the M25 for the last 20 years!!!! I also read somewhere that when you paint plastic, a reaction can happen, which stains the plastic underneath, someone else said it could be carbon buildup, but have never seen anything as bad as these though.
To get this black stuff off, I tried everything. Again I tried bleach, oven cleaner and sanding. Someone suggested caustic soda, but that sounded way too drastic. Eventually I tried the coarsest wet and dry available and finally the stuff started to shift.
After hours of sanding and doing all the fidley bits round the hub I arrived at this.
This was one side of one wheel so I still had three sides to go
I finished of stripping the other side and the both sides of the front wheel, so all I had left to do was to shift this black stuff that was all over them (must be why the person re sprayed them)
I then tried a scotch brite pad (again the coarsest available) and this method shifted it pretty quick. Downside was that I managed to only get 1/2 of one side done before I was left with this:
sanding wheel was completly worn down to nothing
I then thought fook it and assembled a heavy duty array of dremmel sanding gear like this
I found the above attachment good for working around the hubs and the metal sanding wheel was great for moving the black stuff but I havd to be verry careful as one wrong move could have resulted in loosing half the wheel
also the friction from the sanding mops heated up the wheel very quick, so I adjusted the speed on the drill to slow, in order not to melt the wheel by letting the heat build up in any one place:-[
Today after spending some more time on sanding the smal areas, I have arrived at this point:
Havent wiped them down with wd40 yet as there are still some small bits to do round the hub. What a slog
I wouldnt recomend this method to anyone else, its just what I had to do to get them into this state. People suggested media blasting, but no one near me did it with anything finer than grit blasting ( which now thinking bout it, would have probably been less aggressive than the things I used!!!!)
Both wheels are a couple of mm thinner than my other tuffs, but only on the inside spokes. I have another set of red tuffs on a show and these wrere intended to go on my christmas rider build, but not sure I can bring myself to get them dirty after all my hard work
I will give them a ride and let you know if they hold up now that they are a tiny bit thinner
