Wheels are off and ready to be cleaned or restored or even painted. So where do I start? This is what we are starting with; very oxidized but the black paint is in pretty good condition.
The spokes are going to be difficult to clean. The machining on them is very pronounced. You can see the grooves here and they are going to be troublesome to clean.
The wheel bearings will be coming out at some stage.
This is a close up of the rim. Not very nice.
I started off using 400 grit and doing one side just on the rim. That was about an hour. This took off the worst of the oxidisation but still left mottling on the metal. (click on the image to enlarge). It looks OK from one angle then you move to another angle and you see this:
So I tried a variety of different buffing and polishing techniques; Autosol (aluminium polish) by hand and with a Dremel buffing attachment, then a car paint restorer and finally Brasso with a Scotchbrite pad.
This product has been around for ever. I remember my Dad using it to remove scratches from his watch glass. It smells yuk but it is rather like a fine grinding past and with a bit of elbow grease (not available in a tin sadly) it does the job.
Not a bad before and after shot eh? Today I did one side of one wheel which was probably 2 hours in total. I am thinking that although the paint is OK I will probably go over it with Humbrol Enamel and do it by hand. I saw someone else had done this with a great result. Sure as anything beats masking these things up with 1,000 yards of tape and rattle canning them. After painting the black and doing all the polishing, I will experiment with painting them with a 2 pack satin clear coat.
The spokes were a different matter. Due to the machining which has left deep grooves, it is not really possible to possible this part. I used a Dremel with a small wire brush attachment in the first intsance. The spokes looked like this to start with (click image to enlarge):
So I started on them with the Dremel.
And they end up like this. A slight worry is that the steel brush is actually taking away too much of the metal and the grooves are beginning to disappear. I have ordered some brass brushes to see if they will be less aggressive and still get the job done.
The before and after spoke - speaks (past tense of spoke?) for itself.
