Here at the Alloy Care Centre we use a very particular process to refurbish alloy wheels. In this post we will go through the first part of our process.
First we remove the tyre from the wheel, before placing it into our chemical stripping tank to remove all the lacquer, paint and primer. This can take anything from 2 to 8 hours, depending on the make and age of the wheel and the paint applied. For some reason Audi’s often take the longest!
Having fully stripped the wheel it is placed into our rinse tank to remove any final traces of paint and to wash off the chemical. The wheel is then dried and placed on our work bench so we can assess the damage.
Here we can see the damage to the rim of this Mini wheel that needs to be repaired.
By using an orbital sander or, when needed, an angle grinder, we can smooth out the damage as you can see from the photo above.
The wheel is now ready to be “sand blasted” in the machine below. Sand blasting is a general term to describe the act of propelling very fine material, often called media, at a high velocity using compressed air. In this process the sand is replaced with chilled iron grit as it breaks down more slowly and is ideally suited for “keying” the wheel surface.
In the short video clip below you can see the grit coming out of the nozzle, keying the surface as it hits the wheel.
With the sand blasting process now finished the wheel is “aired off” to make sure all the grit is removed ready for the painting process.
To be continued next week!
Steve – ACC Wheels