Ame Circlar Spec R

[FWP.DynamiX]

Hey guys. I have a set of AME Circlar Spec R (At least I believe they are Spec R when I compare them to a Spec R). I read that these wheels are discontinued and they usually have a polished barrel and a painted center. Mine are however all painted grey and I figure since they are supposed to be a 2 piece wheel, I should be able to disassemble them and maybe do some work to give them a new life.

Has anyone attempted to disassemble an AME Circlar?

I did a search on the forums but found nothing. There are youtube videos about disassembling wheels (BBS 3 pieces) but those seem to be obvious considering I can actually see the bolts that hold them together. But for the AME Circlar, there are no obvious bolts. Perhaps they are on the inside hidden away? If anyone could give me some insight, that'd be great. Otherwise, I guess I'll be doing a write-up on how to take these apart and how to give them a second wind.

Here's what they look like now. the picture isn't mine but it is basically the same thing.

[R31 drift pig]

They're actually Enkei Circular GTA wheels. Single piece cast. You cant split them unfortunately. I had a set on my soarer years ago.

With Enkei 2/3 piece wheels you can undo all the bolts inside the rim and knock the centre out. I have a set of Enkei/ABC Exclusive wheels in the shed that were on my 33 for a while that need to be split and refinished, and you can quite easily see the bolts and nuts to split them.

Enkei also use a odd type of screw to hold their wheels together. Looks like a regular torx bit but actually has a different no. of teeth. I had to get the correct socket in from Germany as I couldn't find it anywhere in aus.

As for your wheels, you could try stripping the paint and polishing the lip and painting the centre, but I reckon you'd have a hell of a time getting between the spoke and the lip.

maybe blast them and get them powdercoated in colour you like. I have Enkei RPF1's on my 33 and that silver is really nice. Maybe match that colour?

Hope that helps somewhat.

[Victory]

The AME Circular rims are a 2 piece wheel which have the centre welded to the rim lip with one long continuous weld on the inside face of the wheel and you cannot disassemble them.

The rim section is normally polished and then covered in clear coat. With time the clear coat gets a lot of tiny stone chips and water gets in under the clear coat and starts to corrode making them look crap. This is what happened to my Circulars and it took about 4 - 5 hours per rim to sand off the clear coat by hand with wet and dry sandpaper and then polish each rim.

I would suggest that this has happened to these rims sometime in the past and the previous owner has simply sand blasted them and painted them silver.

Looking back this is what I should have done to mine instead of wasting four days sanding and polishing them up.