Here is a small update on the Style 5 rims that I am using on the car. I found these at a local salvage yard for $300. They had the usual curb rash and the clear coat was peeling. Cosmetically, the barrels were pretty bad. I used various stages of grit to remove the curb rash and polish the barrels to a mirror finish. I finished the polish with a polishing compound and light cutting jeweler's rouge on a shaggy buffing wheel. This project was beyond tedious, and only recommended for true skin flints and insomniacs.
I took the rims apart and set out to polish the barrels.
The center sections were in good shape so I left those alone.
I used aircraft stripper to remove the clear coat. It took a while and several coats but it eventually all came off.
I used a plastic spakle / putty knife top gentle remove the tough stick on coating.
I close up of the aircraft stripper doing it's thing.
I polished the rims buy hand using a successive levels of grit paper - going from coarse to fine (250 for curb rash though 2000 for mirror polish.
This was tedious top say the least. I finished the rims off with a buffing wheel on a drill and some jewler's rouge.
BBS multi piece rims use special knurled bolts to hold them together and they are very expensive to replace. I called around to have them chromed, but it was going to be absurdly expensive so I decide to zinc plate them and polish.
After buying a zinc ingot of ebay, I made a plating solution using acetic acid and sugar. The ingot has to soak at least 24 hrs to pull zinc into solution for plating.
I used some rechargeable AA batteries for the voltage. Zinc plating requires a very low voltage to be passed through solution. I monitored the voltage drop with a meter to know when I need to replace the batteries. Below is a shot of the bolts coming out of solution. They ended up dull in color and had zinc crystals attached to the metal.
I placed each bolt into a drill, spun them and polished them with super fine steel wool and 2000 grit wet #m autobody sand paper. The picture is lousy, but the finished results are very nice.
Cleared the bolts before reassembly.
Then I reassembled the rims, attaching the centers to the barrels and torquing the bolts to spec. I could be more pleased with the results.
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