alloys.........don't do it!
Discussion
OW 
If anyone else is contemplating refurbishing their alloys themselves then may I recommend you don't unless you're being a cheapskate like me.
Just spent the second whole day on mine and now have five very smooth and stripped
wheels in my garage. My fingers hurt, there's a few burns from the paintstripper and my nails are a mess 
Tomorrow will be slightly more satisfying as I get to paint them at last
Don't panic, they will be a shade of silver, not pink or anything nasty.
You can tell I'm bored and waiting till payday! Thought I'd do them before I got her new tyres and spilt paintstripper on them. The tyre place shall be threatened with pain if they damage them!
On a positive note, it's only cost me £5 in paintstripper plus whatever the paint costs me tomorrow
If anyone else is contemplating refurbishing their alloys themselves then may I recommend you don't unless you're being a cheapskate like me. Just spent the second whole day on mine and now have five very smooth and stripped
wheels in my garage. My fingers hurt, there's a few burns from the paintstripper and my nails are a mess Tomorrow will be slightly more satisfying as I get to paint them at last
Don't panic, they will be a shade of silver, not pink or anything nasty. You can tell I'm bored and waiting till payday! Thought I'd do them before I got her new tyres and spilt paintstripper on them. The tyre place shall be threatened with pain if they damage them!
On a positive note, it's only cost me £5 in paintstripper plus whatever the paint costs me tomorrow
Yet to polish mine carn't stop driving it
so you recomend Autoglym?
Steve I would love to be driving mine, but hopefully it will be worth the wait in the end.Autoglym is a great polish, and I love the smell! the metal polish is the best I have used, in fact I have there complete range, leather stuff for the seats, window polish, never found one to be a bad buy. Andy.
I would love to be driving mine, but hopefully it will be worth the wait in the end.Autoglym is a great polish, and I love the smell! the metal polish is the best I have used, in fact I have there complete range, leather stuff for the seats, window polish, never found one to be a bad buy. Andy.
It will be worth it Andy, you are reaching the end.
Then all you have to do is drive it
Trust me, they were way, way past being polishable or even retrievable with a wet/dry rub down. Their condition was in keeping with the rest of her when I first bought her 
The outside face on three was heavily salt corroded and had long since lost any hope of being shiny. The other two were shiny in places but had lacquer and paint flaking and peeling off here there and everywhere. I could have perhaps got one or two small areas shiny again!
The inside was even better, hmmmmm
Supposed to be painted black. This had mostly bubbled up and a poke with a scraper revealed vast amounts of white powder 
Bit more pokeage and lots of paint flaked off.
Paint stripper was applied to what paint remained and parts of my hand and face. I'm glad I wore goggles, it hurts. Removed that and after lots of wet/dry sanding they look like they've got potential to look quite nice.
They're not split rims but were a bit on the fiddly side. I would put a picture in the message but it's too late in the day to figure that out.......
night
The outside face on three was heavily salt corroded and had long since lost any hope of being shiny. The other two were shiny in places but had lacquer and paint flaking and peeling off here there and everywhere. I could have perhaps got one or two small areas shiny again!
The inside was even better, hmmmmm
Supposed to be painted black. This had mostly bubbled up and a poke with a scraper revealed vast amounts of white powder Bit more pokeage and lots of paint flaked off. Paint stripper was applied to what paint remained and parts of my hand and face. I'm glad I wore goggles, it hurts. Removed that and after lots of wet/dry sanding they look like they've got potential to look quite nice.
They're not split rims but were a bit on the fiddly side. I would put a picture in the message but it's too late in the day to figure that out.......
night
If they're original pattern Wedge wheels, they were diamond-cut across the outside with the backs, orifices and the one groove painted black.
You can get them recut, but the trouble with aluminium is that it corrodes as soon as air gets to it, and if there are pits in the surface they harbour oxide and moisture, so as soon as you recut/ lacquer/ paint them the grot starts spreading from the pits. Then it's only a matter of time before they need doing again. If you recut too often you can thin the wheel dangerously, though to be fair the Wedge alloys were designed in pre-CAD/CAM days and have far more alloy in them than a 14" wheel does these days (check out the weight of a bare wheel). Keeping a mirror finish by wet'n'dry/ Loyblox/ Autosol alone is a lifetime's work.
The later 15" cross-spokes are a pain but at least were painted and not polished. IMHO not the nicest wheel ever to grace a Wedge though. I think a 5-spoke with broad, square-edged spokes does the business. Too many spokes spoils the effect, 'roundy' spokes don't suit and anyone with half an engineering bent can see that a 3-spoke wheel is a pants idea, best left to 1.2L Corsas.
Just my 4d's-worth...
Ian
You can get them recut, but the trouble with aluminium is that it corrodes as soon as air gets to it, and if there are pits in the surface they harbour oxide and moisture, so as soon as you recut/ lacquer/ paint them the grot starts spreading from the pits. Then it's only a matter of time before they need doing again. If you recut too often you can thin the wheel dangerously, though to be fair the Wedge alloys were designed in pre-CAD/CAM days and have far more alloy in them than a 14" wheel does these days (check out the weight of a bare wheel). Keeping a mirror finish by wet'n'dry/ Loyblox/ Autosol alone is a lifetime's work.
The later 15" cross-spokes are a pain but at least were painted and not polished. IMHO not the nicest wheel ever to grace a Wedge though. I think a 5-spoke with broad, square-edged spokes does the business. Too many spokes spoils the effect, 'roundy' spokes don't suit and anyone with half an engineering bent can see that a 3-spoke wheel is a pants idea, best left to 1.2L Corsas.
Just my 4d's-worth...
Ian
That sounds like you could be describing mine well. They are original 14 inch, I've seen them on adverts. I quite like them. The only other wheels I've seen that I like and think (IMHO) suit her are hideously expensive 3piece affairs. Not convinced about the 5spoke idea but I've yet to see them on a Wedge so will withold judgement for now
So this alloy corroding business, I assume it works on the same principal as steel. In that it needs water/air to start off. Assuming they're dry, clean and I paint them well am I reasonably safe? You've got me worried now
Oh well, Halfords doesn't open for another hour so I'll have a jug of coffee and ponder..............
cheers
Dave
So this alloy corroding business, I assume it works on the same principal as steel. In that it needs water/air to start off. Assuming they're dry, clean and I paint them well am I reasonably safe? You've got me worried now
Oh well, Halfords doesn't open for another hour so I'll have a jug of coffee and ponder..............
cheers
Dave
york33 said: That sounds like you could be describing mine well. They are original 14 inch, I've seen them on adverts. I quite like them. The only other wheels I've seen that I like and think (IMHO) suit her are hideously expensive 3piece affairs. Not convinced about the 5spoke idea but I've yet to see them on a Wedge so will withold judgement for now
So this alloy corroding business, I assume it works on the same principal as steel. In that it needs water/air to start off. Assuming they're dry, clean and I paint them well am I reasonably safe? You've got me worried now
Oh well, Halfords doesn't open for another hour so I'll have a jug of coffee and ponder..............
cheers
Dave
Dave:
That's as good a job as you can do. Even if you had a lathe, the cutting tool effectively cuts a helix all the way across, and you could still have cruddy pits in the 'gaps' in between! Depends how big a magnifying glass you want to use...
The cross-spokes on my car were fine when I bought it: I think they'd had a recent refurb but now there are sizeable areas of grot, yet the paint seems to be still intact over some of them. so there must have been something under there to trigger it again.
Quick bit of history: the original Wedge wheels were cast at Telcast in Telford. In later years it was known (amongst other things) as Two Gates Wheels: finally it was Raceline who owned the plant but I believe they've also gone tits-up. One presumes the casting dies MAY be lying around in a car park somewhere....
Most of the modern TVR wheels are cast in West Bromwich. Some engine components for the S6 motor are made in Coventry and the Rover V8 is (still) under sentence of death in Leeds.
Ian
My old wedge (350SE) wheels had JML cast in them, sort of all-together - with the two legs of the M being the J and L. I was told they were made by O.Z.? I doubt it. My current Chim std wheels have the very same mark cast on the reverse and words "Made in Italy". ANyone shed any light here?
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