Preparing wheels

[Kram]

Steel wheels I've only ever noticed them rusty or matt black..

@Dcal is there a reason not to do all the epoxy first and save the effort of masking? Are you doing the insides it wet on wet?
Once the inside is done I'm planning to flip it and rest it on the hub mounting face.

I see you didnt clean the rust stains or mask the wheel mounting face? I was assuming that shouldnt be painted and was going to use a fine grit paper to polish it back to clean metal on mine. Should it be painted? I guess it would reduce corrosion with the steel hub.

 

[Turbo]

Steel wheels I've only ever noticed them rusty or matt black..

@Dcal is there a reason not to do all the epoxy first and save the effort of masking? Are you doing the insides it wet on wet?
Once the inside is done I'm planning to flip it and rest it on the hub mounting face.

I see you didnt clean the rust stains or mask the wheel mounting face? I was assuming that shouldnt be painted and was going to use a fine grit paper to polish it back to clean metal on mine. Should it be painted? I guess it would reduce corrosion with the steel hub.

If you have a spare axle stand make an attachment with a tapered cone that fits nicely inside the centre hole of the rim.
The rim will sit on the cone and it will not affect any critical painted surface. That way you can paint both sides of the rim in the same session.
Paint the back first and using the sides of the rim where the tyre sits you can flip it over and paint the front.

 

[steveo3002]

Testing the new sander I got the scratches off the face, thats the easy bit. I notice that there wasnt a noticable top coat/basecoat, seemed to be a solid layer of silver gloss, and I didnt know you could get silver in direct gloss..?

can get it on ebay , did 2 sets of ours with it , save a bit of work

 

[Dcal]

Turning the wheels while they are wet is tricky.
Then leaving a wet face, even if it's on the hub mounting face, will damage the paint in that area.
I can't see any way of turning the wheels part way through the process without leaving areas unpainted or having a clever bit of equipment doing the turning. I'm sure such equipment does exist, as @Turbo has said, but I'd need 4 sets and there would still be small bits left unpainted which would bother me.

I have tall axle stands and did make something up like @Turbo described for the grinder head I painted a few days ago but I had machined surfaces I needed to mask off so that seemed a reasonable option.

I blasted and painted the areas where the wheels meets the hubs. If I was being really anal I'd have applied Cerakote to the face (which is a thin film ceramic coating) but I can't see a bit of paint there causing any real issues.
No doubt someone will be along shortly to tell me that this will cause huge problems but I can't see it. The paint in that area will probably only be 0.1mm thick.

 

[Kram]

Turning the wheels while they are wet is tricky.

My idea is a plate to sit on the hub mounting face with a tube welded in the centre to poke through the hole, which on mine that hole is not painted anyway. Then the wheel can be sat on the plate or hung from the tube to get access to both sides. For mine I will be doing one at a time, but I will need to bring it indoors to cure in this cold weather.

I dont see the mounting face causing big problems but it might glue the wheel to the hub? Or chip from being bolted down.


I have a large bearing and a plate I can use for rotating parts I think that will be useful for this rather than walking around it, just to spin it, for doing the rim.

 

[Dcal]

I kept the old hubs when I changed wheel bearings a couple of years ago with the intention of making up a lazy Susan but it was going to cover too much of the hub and wheel bolt area for my liking so I changed tack.

There's loads of ways to skin a cat, just depends what you have available and how much you overthink it.