D rusting steel wheels

Wheels are for my MK2 , just a small diffrence to the wheels I have on the car now , they are from a series 3 XJ6 , that has a full size wheel cover , not just a hub cap , so the 3 fixing points are not needed !
I got the 5 rims for £20 , as you can see they are very rusty , had 3 quotes for D rusting them , all around £30 a wheel , far too much in my eyes !!
So looked on the internet , and see White Vinager , on you tube the results looked quite impressive , so a search on e-bay found 20lt for £15 delivered .

Another search found a wire brush attachment for my Angle grinder for £3.00 inc delivery , same one is £12 in Halfords :open_mouth:

So went over the wheel with the brush , my thinking is , so the vinager has less work to do , then placed the wheel in a tub with 10lt of the white vinager , just enough to cover all the centre of the rim , turned the rim over daily so all the rim was under at some time , did this for a week ,
At the moment I have a second rim in the tub , with 15lt of vinager , and a load of gravel , to bulk it up , and all the rim is under the vinager , plus I never used the wire brush , see what diffrence it makes !
As you can see by the pictures , it works !!!
Last picture is of a wheel on the car now !

Only problem with doing wheels is the size , but for smaller parts that fit in a container white vinager is ideal , just leave then in for a week !!

Nice bit of work and excellent write up. I was fed up dealing with the chrome wires on my car I had them blasted (plus a few spokes, then trued and straightened) then powder coated by Tudor Wheels. £60 a wheel plus spokes and delivery so total all in around £350.00 for the four.

JCC

The wire wheels look great…but I have heard that powder coating wire wheels is a no-no as the heat in the oven causes the spokes to loose strength or change size throwing the adjustments off. Maybe you did just the rims and hubs and reassembled later? What do the rest of the forum members know about this??

I’ve had no problems, and the powder coating was as an assembly, not coated parts assembled afterwards. I would have thought as an assembly or as parts if heat was an issue same potential for problems. The wheels have been on the car for just shy of a year - about 2000 miles and no issues to date other than the brake dust just falls off with an easy wash rather than burned/rusted into the chrome as before.

Powder coating isn’t hot enough to do damage.

Chrome plating does brittle-ize, though.

Sandblasting is needed with powder coating.

I have powder coated wires, BUT, because of their age, new spokes and nipples were utilized and you want to disassemble them BEFORE.

Then after the PC is finished, you need to chase the nipple threads and run a die on the spoke threads.

I was under the impression that sand blasting wire wheels, as a component was a no no as the sand gets lodged in between the spokes and the rim causing fretting?

Wheels were blasted to remove all chrome and rust; repaired (spokes / nipples replaced as required), straightened and trued, then oven primer and powdercoat as an assembly.

Great results (must £30.0 in vinegar)
What size tyres are you going for with these?

Tyres will be 205 70 15 !