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Progress on the wheels. Well wheel, because I have only finished one so far. I wanted to do the whole process on one so I could learn for the next three.
Photo dump of the sanding process:
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Drilled out all of the fake rivets on the fake wheels. ESM is charging $1 for every rivet needed to be replaced, and there are 100 rivet holes. When I originally Emailed them about the clear coat failing problem, they pretty much said that sucks and wet sand it. As I was irritated with that already, I emailed them again about more poor quality and asked for a compensation on the rivet replacement price. They offered $75 so I think I'm going to take it while I can get it. They are fake, no need to get upset right?
Also after searching through Oreilly's, Home Depot, and Lowes I could not find buffing wheels nor Polishing rouge. Whats even more frustrating is Harbor Freight is the only place I could find the tools and rouge... All in one.
Anywho, polishing rouge is a miracle compound.
First run:
Second run:
I'm home for spring break now so I don't think much work is going to be done on the wheels for another several days. But before I left I changed the oil and replaced both coolant temperature sensors in hopes to help the car from running rich.
Again I post a lot on instagram, give me a follow! @zrec_e30
I dont have much of an update, but if anyone can tell I mostly have updates when I have money lol.
Due to landing a job as an apprentice for a local German car shop, I have money. The ESM's held their reputation as fake wheels when the clear coat started to fail on the lips. (Just one spot of many)
I thought about finding other wheels but after putting the car on an actual lift for the first time, I took note of an insane amount of work needs done still. And for fucks sake I need to get these studded snow tires off.
Also I made a short list of just things I found with a quick look over.
So to start off the list I am going to refinish the wheel lips. I found a good write up on stanceworks.com forum page for refinishing lips and polishing so I gave that a go. Started off by removing/breaking off the previous rivets so I can do the sanding and clear coat removing on the lips. I'll be replacing these with ESM's replacement gold rivets.
All of the clear coat needs to come off to get down to the bare metal, but I don't want to spray any stripper on the center. So I carefully taped off the centers of the wheels.
Masked up
Sprayed the stripper on
After I washed the stripper off and got the clear coat off I put the wheels away for the night and will continue on them tomorrow with an update of how far I will have gotten. My goal is to sand down the small amount of curb rash I have on two wheels, as well as sand down the machined lines (if possible) on all the wheels so when I polish I can get that mirror shine. If some of you are confused as to why I am doing this to such cheap wheels and spending any sort of money of them, it's for experience and resale value. Obviously these wheels wont sell for a lot of money but they will sell for more after being refinished than what they are now. Also for when the day comes that I get a real set of 3 piece wheels I most likely will not have money for already refinished ones, so I'm using the experience on these for future knowledge and skill.
Yeah I love the needles! I used a testors brand from a hobby store at home and brush painted the needles as well I could. I actually wet sanded the tails and re-painted because they came out heavy and the clear was coming off for some reason. Yeah I did, faulty f***ing starter part. Got it fixed though!
Yeah, I used the Testors as well.
Did you use outdoor automotive clear? Testors clear can't handle the UV rays.
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