Around the Rim (Part 4)

Continuing the saga of the mid-90's rims, today's post covers damage repairs, and masking. If you haven't read the prior posts that got us this far, the links for the other 3 parts are here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. Basically, I got a set of rims, they were kinda beat up, but I'm going to use them anyway because a few hours of my time is worth the $700 I would have to pay for a new set of 15" rims. This is just one more way to express that the journey is the destination, and why incur the environmental cost of new rims when you can keep another set out of the landfill? Everybody wins. If the set you're messing with doesn't need repair, and you don't plan to do any fancy paint, you could skip to the end and shoot a few coats of clear and be done with it.

Filling the Gouges

The mid-90's Honda rims had been on a daily driver for most of their lives. There appeared to be some bad-parking days when the rim ate into the curb. There were snow and ice days when the owner put on tire chains which scratched up the face near the lug nuts. Because of how bad the damage was on a couple of the rims, I decided that I would fill and paint the bad areas, and have a consistent color plan across all 4 wheels.

I could have used "bog" or Bondo, but I had a small tin of Lab Metal from when I swapped out the Westy poptop for a Riviera/ASI top a few years ago. It had dried up a bunch, but a after letting a few ounces of lacquer thinner sit in the tin overnight, it softened it right up. Similar to bog, or spackle the Lab Metal applies like a paste. Work the stuff all the way into the damage. If the Lab Metal won't hold, you may need to dig some material out of the damage so the Lab Metal has something to bite into. It's sort of like how the dentist sometimes has to drill out some good tooth material in order for the filling to set without an air bubble, and then hold.

Either way and whatever material you use, over-fill the damage so there is extra filler all around and on top of the repair. Consider that you will be sanding this down, so don't go crazy with it, but if you try to make it all nice and flush when it is wet, the material will shrink as it dries so you'll have a concave patch relative to the size of what you filled. Once it is dry, lightly sand with a high-grit paper (like 220 or something) until it is flush with the surrounding undamaged wheel. I followed this step with a general light sand with 320-grit paper on the entire rim and then cleaned it with glass cleaner so there was no dust remaining.

Masking and Cutting

Masking sounds so simple. Just tape over where you don't want paint. When you're painting a door frame for your closet, it is that simple. The dry-wall is flat, the edges are square and tape sticks really easily. When you're talking about a rim, none of those things are true. It's round. The various lips are not hard-edged; they are usually beveled or rounded off and tape doesn't stick as easily partly because of those 2 factors and partly because tape just doesn't want to stick to raw aluminum.

But, it can be done. First, use tape like a tack-cloth, pulling the surface dust off the raw aluminum. Doing this immediately before you tape will definitely help the tape stick. I also found that over-taping, or applying tape beyond the edge of where I wanted the paint to be allowed me to direct the tape better. Once on, I would set the edge with a razor-blade held mostly parallel to the rim but at a fixed angle, sliding along the rounded edge. This defined a very clear and consistent edge that I couldn't do with just the tape-edge. Each transition from taped to not-taped where I could get a razor-blade I defined this way. Yes, this takes considerable time. For those areas where cutting the line with a blade wasn't possible, I followed the old axiom from when I painted houses: use tape to prevent paint from getting where you don't want it. More simply, if you can't get the tape right on the edge, err on the side of getting a little paint where you don't want it versus covering up where you really wanted it in the first place. This sounds obvious, but in practice we all are such perfectionists that we try to get the tape right on the line. Sometimes, this means you cover up a thin line where you wanted paint and you don't see it until you pull the tape. That moment really sucks. So, get that paint a little too far onto the raw aluminum and then work the line afterwards with a razor. This is much easier and looks way better than trying to do touchup or retaping/shooting. Between the sanding and the taping, this is where you spend 95% of your time and makes the difference between a not-that-great paint job and a looks-pretty-good one. It's all in the prep.

I can't believe how long this has gotten or how long it has taken to finish these rims. Anyway, I should be finishing this thread of posts with one more: next time with priming, color, wet-sanding and clear-coat. Thanks, as always, for following along.

Hapy cube-inet

Taking a leave from the sports car (280ZX and MGB) projects, today's post covers a little side thing I've been clowning for Hapy the Wonderbus. It's not quite a cabinet, it's more than just a cube... it's a cube-inet.

No Stove/sink

pre-cut, starting assebly

I guess this all started when I put the middle row Vanagon seat into the middle of Hapy's floor (See Vanagon Seat Install). I couldn't fit the bench seat with the sink/stove unit that came with the '79 Westy interior installed. The unit jutted out 3 inches too deep into the bus interior. In retrospect, the sink/stove unit never really got used. I hadn't installed the propane tank because the '72 bus comes with an under-panel below the sliding door that I would have had to cut out/off. I have read that that under panel and it's partner panel on the other side (behind driver where a slider would be on that side of the bus) were added for more rigidity. Since this was the first year of the pancake engine, and the non-removable rear valence, this was probably a case of over-engineering. Still, I didn't remove the panels, I didn't install the propane, and I didn't use the sink/stove. I didn't even hook-up the external water source. I sold off the kitchen unit to a local bus guy a couple of years later. I hope it is being put to good use.

Regardless of all that backstory, once the kitchen was removed, it left a dead spot inside the bus. Over the next few years, the dead spot has been a great place to put coolers or milk crates full of gear. When we weren't travelling (read: full of gear), though, it looked pretty bad. The pile of gear didn't look all that great either, but I'm not so concerned about aesthetics, if you hadn't noticed.

Concept

cube

The thought occurred: what if we build something that could fit in the dead spot that was the same height/depth as the fridge storage thing. Remember how I pulled the guts out of the refer to make it a storage cabinet? (See From Fridge to Storage if you're curious.) Our thought was that we could have one relatively flat surface running the whole length from the tail gate to the back of the driver seat. If done right, it could serve as a spot for a passenger to put a drink or a book while traveling, serve as visually blocked storage and then get removed so we have another surface in the camping/parking lot. Then, let's take that concept up another level. What if the thing we built could also stand up tall with something like a counter-top that was still the whole width from fridge to driver seat, but around counter height?

The next level sounded too hard at first, and probably sounds confusing to you. The picture below helps, but I didn't have anything like that as a guide. So, I focused on the dimensions and landed on building a hollow box out of 1" x 1" square balusters. This ended up being a pretty brilliant decision in my humble opinion. The design literally allows us to keep "out of the box" that hard sides would have created for us in how we can use it. Without sides, we can stuff things inside when its in the bus, or use it in much broader ways when we're set up for camping. Again, the pictures below will help.

For a top, we had an old dresser that was completely falling apart. It was pretty cheap when it was built 40 years ago, but because it was so old, it wasn't made of glue-board; it was a combination of solid wood and the plywood of the time. One of the side panels wasn't too beat up, and only had bad splits along one edge. Once I measured down what I needed, I could cut off most of the damage and all that's left is a distressed looking counter-top.

Build

standing tall

As I said, I started with 1" x 1" balusters. Why? I had a pile of them lying around from an old guinea pig hutch we had torn down last spring. A cube has 12 legs, 4 each for length, width and depth. There are 24 90* angles that join these 12 legs, and for that I used 1" angles from Home Despot. That's a lot of drilling and screwing (4 screws per angle * 24 angles = 96). In the end, the box isn't perfectly square, but for an initial concept it worked out very well.

I took the side of the dresser and cut it down to fit flush against the back and sides with a slight overhang over the front. Since it was a side of a dresser, it had wood slats along the inside to keep the tongue-and-grove plywood together. I cut these down so they fit between the legs regardless of the orientation of the box. These create tension, a friction that allows the top to snug-in. I hadn't expected that. After some test fitting and some trimming down, we have a hollow cube with a removable top that can stand tall for a counter or short for a bench or drink table.

standing short

Usability
Boo and I tested it for weight and both of us could fit, sitting side-by-side without the cube wavering at all. Quite the contrary, we tried to get it to wiggle while sitting on it and it wouldn't. Since the top isn't secured with fasteners, we won't be trying that with the "tall" version.

Hapy is in storage for the winter, so I haven't yet had the pleasure of setting the cube-inet into the dead spot to confirm it fits as well as I expect it to. That expectation? I think that it will sit snug against the fridge and driver seat partition and flush with the inside edge of the fridge, but there will be a gap along the outer wall because the bus isn't square. Fortunately, I don't care about that gap. Maybe a subsequent version will have a slightly deeper counter top that will cover the gap. I should probably test fit before I start planning the next thing... Anyway, if the rest isn't perfect, I'm out around $20 for the 90* angles I had to buy. Otherwise, the materials were free from the scrap pile. I love projects like that.

Anyway, that's it for today. I have a replacement radiator on back-order, representing the one big thing I need to do so Hapy is ready for festival season. Thanks, as always, for following along.

Around the Rim (Part 3)

Today's post continues the saga of upgrading the rims on the '78 MGB from the crummy chromeys to some mid-90's Honda alloys.

Clean, Clean Again

original Honda rims

After 30 years of use, and very little in terms of care, these new-to-me rims needed some love. First, they needed to be cleaned. I started with some basic car wash, a scrub brush and a hose. This worked some, but there was some stubborn brake dust and other grime on the insides. This took brake cleaner and some 150-grit sandpaper, but I was able to get down to some silver. I washed them a third time, this time with dish soap and a scrubby sponge in my kitchen sink (Boo puts up with so much). Once cleaned up, we could really get a look at what I'd bought.

Assess the Damage
Two of the rims were in fairly good condition. There wasn't much in terns of curb rash around the outer edges, and there were only a few scrapes from what looked like applying snow chains. The other two rims, however, had been in a few fights. There were some small chunks chipped out nearest the rubber, and many many gouges in that outer edge as well. Sadly, there were some deeper wedge-shaped scrapes in the face where, again, it looked like the rubber strap for tire chains had been put on possibly wrong such that the loops dug into the rim.

Plan the Work
The damage, though, was purely cosmetic. I was able to add air, and the air held in all 4 tires. Since the damage was surface, I knew I could repair it, but I felt I would need to paint rather than restore to plain aluminum. I'm sure there are others out there who can repair aluminum such that it looks like the damage was never there. That's not me.

paint concept (upper right)

To fix the chips and gouges, I thought about brazing alumi-weld into the gouges, and then polishing. Alternatively, I could use Lab Metal. I've used that stuff before, and it really does finish nicely, but I'm not convinced that it will leave the exactly right color. I suppose I could mix aluminum dust from sanding the rim into the mix for coloring if I really wanted to retain the all-aluminum look. After looking at the rim on the car, I think adding some color would look better, especially since there is a very limited amount of chrome on the car.

So, I planned to repair the chips and gouges with Lab Metal, and paint the outer lip and the mag-face, leaving an inner rim and the insides of the mags the original aluminum. This would bring out some of the chrome while not having an overwhelming amount of it. I mocked up a few options in paint so I could get a sense of how it would look and then I got started. First, you need to get down to the bare aluminum.

Take off that Clear Coat

on-car paint concept

The Interweb is a great resource, but some advice just isn't that good. While some is wrong, other advice can just be ill-suited to either your skills or project. For example, there appear to be many folks advocating removing the factory clear coat by sanding until what you're removing shifts from white to grey. Then you know you're down to the aluminum. While this does work, it takes an incredible amount of time. If you try to short-cut the time by using a lower grit (like 60 instead of the recommended 100), the car part will get deeper gouges that need to be sanded off with higher grit. In the end, I'm not sure if much time gets saved. I tried this method with one wheel. Since clear coat is not applied uniformly, you will hit grey while also still removing coating. In the end, I think this method was a bust, and don't suggest it.

For the other 3 rims (and I came back and did the sanded rim too), I used airplane stripper. C had some from when he was stripping the paint off the 280ZX, so I knew it worked and worked well. At least on paint. I knew that it didn't damage rubber when little drips got on it. I laid out the three rims, and brushed stripper on one wheel at a time. Once I got done brushing the third rim, the first was about dry, so I applied a second coat. Doing all four wheels would have timed out just about perfectly. Once the second coat was dry, I attacked the rims with steel wool. The clear coating scrubbed right off, leaving the bare rim with little flecks of clear coat left behind. To get completely cleared, I used a razorblade scraper. The airplane stripper was significantly faster and left behind a better surface. I hosed the rims off, and they were ready for the next step: fixing the damage. I'll get into that next time.

Thanks, as always, for following along. More next time-