Counselling....?

The true purpose of this blog can finally be revealed, as we begin the story of the wheels. I have a deep seated need to get it all off my chest and return to a normal life, now that they are almost completed.

In an earlier post, I talked about one of the reasons for restoring this bike was that it had alloy "Comstar" type wheels rather than chrome spoked wheels. "These will be a doddle to tart up" I thought "and so cheap". Little did I know....

The plan was to rub them down and spray them with silver wheel paint - £10 for aerosols and a sunny Sunday afternoon in the garden. But then I noticed how badly corroded they were on the inside of the metal spokes. Hmm, difficult to get in there and it will look rubbish if I leave it.

Around this time, the powder coating was due to be collected, and I had a natter with John at Elite about it. They could blast the wheels and powder coat the inner bits, but I wanted the "alloy" rim bits leaving, as they should polish up nice and easily. Ah, now that will be costing somewhat more, as they have to be masked for blasting, cleaned up, masked again for powder coating again etc. I decided to have a think about it.

A few weeks later, I'd decided I was going to change the colour of the paintwork from the pretty yucky (to my eyes) blue to a deep metallic burgundy (same colour as the 400-4 F2, for those that know it.) I suddenly had MY VISION. "Wow, what would look really great against that metallic burgundy is a metallic pewter silver wheel with bright polished rims." And I was right - it will look great, but boy it's been a hard road getting there!

Here's the state the wheels were in at the start:

This doesn't really show how rusty the "spokes" were. I decided to bite the bullet and get Elite to powder coat in a metallic deep silver coating. This was quite a lot more expensive than normal and he also wanted to wait and do it as a batch with something else he had coming through - fair do's, but it ended up taking several weeks longer (not really an issue on my timescale!) It was also really expensive because of all the protective masking of the alloy rims.

Anyway, I got them home and set to for a quick job polishing up the alloy rims with a bit of chrome polish. What I hadn't realised was that, though the rims are alloy, they have an anodised coating.... What a bugger that stuff was to get off! It was tough as old boots and I had to sand it from every nook and cranny. It took probably a full day on each wheel just to get to a surface ready for polishing. And I had to buy a "mouse" palm sander with a pointy nose to get into the corners that I probably will never use again  :(

Of course, I had to protect the beautiful pewter powder coating that I'd paid a bomb for, which made it even harder. In hindsight, I could have just asked John to blast the lot off and wouldn't have had to pay for all that pre-masking! To protect the spokes, I'd wrapped them in cling film, then newspaper and duct tape - nothing was going to scratch them! But when I "unwrapped" them, the cling film had stuck to the powder coating! I spent 2 evenings getting it off with my thumbnail and thankfully it was OK.

With that out of the way, the polishing would be easy! I bought a kit from Halfords - good effort but not man enough for the job. Bigger mops and abrasives were ordered from specialists. This is more like it...... but I can't get into the nooks and crannies.

Smaller mops and abrasives for the trusty Dremel were ordered from the same specialists. Now we'll be getting somewhere. And that's where we're at currently, with just the detail polishing to be done. But they do look fab - well to my eye at least - and will make the bike I think.

Thanks for listening. I feel much better getting that off my chest.