RESTORING ALLOY WHEELS

Here are our Civic 18in alloys looking very sorry after 13 British winters, as well as kerbside target practice. I considered doing a DIY refurb on these – but they are just too far gone with a lot of creeping corrosion under the paint. No, we need to get these done by the pros for a proper job.

At AP Tyres in Rotherham, the wheels are removed for a quick appraisal. One of them could be bent or even cracked, though as the tyres hold air and there isn’t a hint of wheel wobble or vibration, we think they are just a simple restoration job. AP Tyres can repair just about anything.

In the office at AP Tyres are a small selection of old alloy wheels that they have refurbished as show wheels. They can paint a wheel just about any colour with the powdercoating process – this is powdered paint sprayed towards the wheels and it melts on with the baking heat.

Upstairs, the tyres are removed from the wheels and marked individually so that the tyres can be refitted to the same wheels before rebalancing. Being a tyre shop as well, any damaged tyres can of course be replaced with new ones. The Maxxis boots on our Civic looked fine.

With the tyres and valves removed, the alloys are either sandblasted or in our case, aciddipped. This acid is pretty horrible stuff. Yet it won’t eat into the metal unless it’s left in there for days. We heard our wheels fizzing away as the acid stripped the old paint off. It takes a few hours.

This is the sandblasting cabinet that takes care of other wheels. Acid gets into the gaps on split-rims and unless they are unbolted and the halves split, it will always be in there to cause havoc once painted. As our wheels aren’t split-rims we can have either option.

These alloys were in the prep department before our wheels were out of the acid tank but you can see how well they clean-up. Here, any surface damage is sorted and the rims can be thoroughly examined. Any cracks or buckling will be taken care of before being refurbished.

Like ours, these wheels were basically fine, but had kerb rash on the outer rim. This is taken care of with a coarse sanding disc on a dual action (DA) sander. There is almost always a goodly amount to metal around the rim edge so marks can be sanded out without any welding.

Here’s a recently powercoated wheel having its outer rim and other intricate areas diamond cut. This is done at this stage before the wheel is put back into the heated power-coating cabinet, after which the alloys are given a coat of lacquer.

Here are a few wheels hanging up in the paint cabinet. The reason factory wheels corrode so quickly is because only the visible outer section is painted – the backs are just primed. Corrosion starts on spoke edges and creeps around. Powdercoating the whole wheel avoids this.

This is the welding department where cracked wheels are welded and buckled ones straightened. A cracked alloy can be repaired and refinished at a fraction of the money a new alloy costs.

Before we go, the tyre pressures of the loaner wheels are checked and adjusted to suit our Civic from AP Tyres database of tyre pressures. With these clean-looking wheels, our Civic already looks better. Just how smart will it look when our newly-refurbished alloys are back on?

Four days later we return to AP Tyres to view our restored alloys. They literally look like new! Because of their simple design, it is worth giving them a wax polish to protect the new finish from brake dust which is notoriously corrosive – cleaning regularly achieves a similar result.

We mentioned earlier why alloy wheels corrode, because the wheel rear faces are almost never painted. At the factory they are sprayed on one side only with a thin primer coat. Here though, the entire wheel is painted and that means there is absolutely nowhere for corrosion to start.

Located back on the Civic with the Honda centre caps added. We went for a darker smoke grey metallic much like our recent Golf GTI project. It looks better and more modern without the oppressive appearance of black wheels. It also hides brake dust well.