The Lime - Wheel Refinishing

In my opinion, nothing is more of a detractor in the looks department from a vehicle than dirty, rusty, ugly wheels. Our Westfalia was suffering from this problem, as evidenced by the first picture above.

In the past, my options for restoring the wheels would have been getting them sandblasted by a sandblasting firm or wire brushing them with an electric drill (as I did on my yellow SB), then painting them with spray paint. Now that I have a large air compressor I am able to do many things at home that I would have farmed out in the past.

Using my pressure pot sandblaster and about 15 pounds of sand, I took all four wheels down to bare metal. I removed all the balancing weights from the wheel. Next I masked them using I technique I read about online - using aluminum flashing and a clamp to wrap around the lip of the rim of the wheel rather than trying to make masking tape bend in a perfect circle. This step alone was a vast improvement over any way I've tried this in the past when the tires were still on the wheel.

I then thinned some Tremclad grey primer with mineral spirits and shot it at about 50 psi with my gravity feed HVLP gun. After drying overnight I loaded the gun with Tremclad aluminum paint and laid down the first coat. Another 24 hours later I abraded the first coat with a scotchbrite pad and shot the final coat of Tremclad.

I am happy with how the wheels turned out. I had a local shop balance them again and now they are ready to go back on the car. I have brand new VW hubcaps for them too!