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My Attempt : Refurbishing 3 Piece Work Rims

NISSAN GTR

By NISSAN GTR,
in Exterior & Interior Styling

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NISSAN GTR Veteran

NISSAN GTR

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I had been looking for a couple years for an ideal set of rims and

with some patience i finally found a set of pearl white VS-XX rims 18X10 +22

for my R34 GTR .

When they arrived from interstate they were in poor condition , 2 rims the lips had been buckled with water marks , all rims had severe scaring and inner barrells pitted from worn brakes and faces had major stone chips . Damn !!!!!

I had never attempted this before to this extent so i started off with a 12 point socket with extension bar and pulled all the assembly bolts apart one by one = 160 in total ………. some of the bolt heads damaged from previous owner and had to be cut off with grinder - 10 in total . Purchased 10 new bolts from WORK U.S.A

in California $50 delivered , Work Aust could only sell in 40 bolts lots for $165 I LOL'D

Presto the faces popped out quite easily

Heres the before pic : Note how black and farked the barrel is !!!! :yucky:

img2088v.jpg

Before i powder coated the faces i numbered and marked each centre with a hacksaw blade to match every barrel and taped the hub face and inner lip of the centre that slots back into the barrel ----basically the the back part the assembly bolts go through .

If you get powder coat on the above sections of the centre face the wheel will NOT run straight , this should remain bare metal .

I got the faces powder coated in satin black (original colour) the guy from HWH Powdercoaters - Oleg and i discovered underneath the Pearl White was Green and then Black …. lol . So it was taken back to bare with sand blasting, lots of work with VS-XX pattern .

Cost $90 each wheel for sandblast and Powder coat

Powdercoat pic :

img2149x.jpgmark vidmar

Had the buckles taken out of the lips and polished with sanding paper 400 -600-1000-2000 this removed pits in the lip and water marks for final finish run over with mothers aluminium polish and power cone SHINY

Shinyness Pic :

img2150tg.jpg

The inside Barrels i spent several weeks trying to clean the pitted and brake dust stained aluminium barrel with sand paper but changed over to a nylon grinding wheel which eventually did the job this with a chisel cleaned the led weight stickers off and Work manufacturers stickers off - as these were pretty damaged = Farked

Barrel cleaning pic :

img2141dt.jpg

img2146hn.jpg

After barrels cleaned i painted barrels with aluminium etching paint and high temperature paint 3 coats , came up ok

Pic of inner barrel painted :

img2153yi.jpg

img2159is.jpg

img2160u.jpg

Next was to polish the centre caps , these had a blemish surface so i used Autosol , Meguires plastX with my DA polisher in a vice , also polished each assembly bolt separately with Autosol .

Pic before and after :

img2143q.jpg

img2144b.jpg

img2156lf.jpg

I bought a torque wrench with some medium hold thread locker and began the tedious job of bolting the faces back to the barrels , started bolting at 6 o'clock ,

12 o'clock , 3 then 9 respectively so on and so on all the way around .

Torque settings are 18 lb ft for a 7mm bolt

Pics completed :

Uimg2175jr.jpg[

img2178j.jpg

img2189nq.jpg

img2181y.jpg

:rolleyes:

img2179e.jpg

Hopefully my experiences can help someone else on this forum who is thinking of refurbishing their rims as well ……... :D

Original price for Rims $ 1800 after work spent $600

Also bought some Work Royal Lock Nuts

Will post pics on car !1

post-68456-0-61448900-1344679050_thumb.jpg

Edited by NISSAN GTR
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lidz Community Regular

lidz

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Posted

awesome result, chuck up some photos once they're on the car!

Also fyi, work royals appear to be the same as the mcgard splinedrives which can be had very cheaply via amazon.com

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NISSAN GTR Veteran

NISSAN GTR

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Cheers everyone for the positive comments .

Happy seal , i also was deciding if powder coating/anodising the lip was such a good idea

sure it looks great but if you get some rash , then what ?

I so want to see your pics , any questions happy to help ....... :D

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Happy Seal Explorer

Happy Seal

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^^ Will do. . .won't be getting home until Friday evening though. . .so sometime next weekend I'll post progress pics. . .

Didn't find a pic of the matte bronze centers with polished barrels. . .looks pretty good imo. . .

7349944972_4f691f0b8f_z.jpg

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  • 3 weeks later...
Happy Seal Explorer

Happy Seal

Posted
Posted

Looks awesome! I hope mine come out looking as good!

Start. . .

IMG_0613.jpg

IMG_0614.jpg

IMG_0615.jpg

IMG_0616.jpg

IMG_0617.jpg

After a few minutes of buffing. . .Works well!

IMG_0620.jpg

Putting all the disks together so they can get cleaned. . .ordering some hardware from Work and picking up some paint tomorrow!

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NISSAN GTR Veteran

NISSAN GTR

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Wow they need some T.L.C Nice Work !!!!!!

Its surprising how well that little red disk works in the barrel , i had to use a chisel and remove wheel weight stickers and work stickers off

Earlier i dont think i mentioned using grease and wax remover as a last step for prepping to paint ,

this is pretty important with aluminium .

Edited by NISSAN GTR
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  • 2 months later...
Waxhead Community Regular

Waxhead

Posted
Posted

I am looking at doing the same to my Nismo LMGT2s. When you bolt in the centre, will it automatically sit concentric due to the location of the bolts?? Or do you need to make adjustments to get the centre section concentric??

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NISSAN GTR Veteran

NISSAN GTR

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Mine slotted together fine wihout any adjustment , i basically put them in the exact position they came apart

I made notches with a hacksaw blade and numbered the back of each barrel and face position 1-4 on the back .

Also most important do not paint any part of the centre face that meets the lip of the barrel = your in BIG trouble

otherwise go for it !

I want to see pics please .

Edited by NISSAN GTR
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