RAW Works

BBS RS001 - Part 3

2011-12-11T11:41:00.005+11:00

After the bolts were torqued down, all that was left to do was seal up the wheels. Now, I've seen many people seal the inside section of the pieces, i.e. they lay a bead towards the inside where the inner meets the centre and the outer meets the centre. I honestly don't see the need for this. The sealant is supposed to act just that, seal the section between a beaded tyre and wheel, and is not supposed to act as an adhesive. That said, a thick bead over the mating sections of the pieces (bolts torqued down already) is all that is needed to seal the wheels up.

So I previously used a manual caulking gun (those hand-pumping ones you see at Bunnings) and they were horrible to use - hard to get a consistent bead and a mad workout on the forearm muscles. So I bought a pneumatic caulking gun. Sealing 3-piece wheels is something I'm not willing to cheap out on, and after seeing my wheel specialist use one for one of his jobs I decided it was something that I needed too.

And what a massive difference it made. It took all of 20 seconds to completely bead the wheel. A smear over the bead using my thumb finished it off.

And that's done. Took two days to cure (still felt soft after leaving it overnight). Here are some pics of the wheels in its completed form:

Black chrome bolts weren't really chrome at all, more of a satin-look, but I prefer that.

Wrinkle-black cap.

And finally some pics with 195/45R15 tyres mounted up and on Tony's EK.

Final specs ended up being 15x8 ET12.3 with a 2" stepped lip.

Cheers.

BBS RS001 - Part 2

2011-12-11T03:47:00.005+11:00

Sorry for the slow updates, I've been a busy man, finishing final assessments for uni and jumping straight into 50 hour work weeks. Anyway, a quick debrief on what had transpired since Part 1 - I replied to a WTB thread on JDMST for some low offset 15x8 wheels in 4x100 and the OP was interested, deposit received and work on completing the wheels began. As of now, the wheels have been completely paid off, shod with 195/45R15 tyres and new owner Tony now rolls around like a boss! So here in Part 2 I'll be picking up from where I left off in Part 1 and covering up to the bolt torquing stage.

Tony was pretty keen on having the wheels ready for an OzHonda meet at JDMYard on the 26th November, so he helped me out as much as he could with the rebuilding of the wheels. The centrecaps were sanded down from 120 grit to 600 grit, and any gashes were covered up with Selleys Metal Knead-It putty. I chose this specific putty as it was convenient to use, quick to set, and easy to sand down.

VHT's engine enamel primer was applied before spraying on some thick coats of VHT's wrinkle black paint.

Usually the wrinkle black takes an eternity to dry and wrinkle in normal temperatures as three thick, heavy coats in cross-hatching spray patterns are recommended, but I enlisted the help of a heat gun to accelerate the wrinkling process.

This was what the centrecaps looked like after ~3 minutes of continuous heating:

And about a minute later, the wrinkling sped up vastly and it looked like this within a matter of seconds:

Note some slight inconsistencies in the reflection of the paint - these spots were still quite wet underneath the top wrinkle layer.

I should mention that from the beginning of sanding all the way to the wrinkling of the paint took a couple of days, as I gave the putty overnight to dry as well as the primer.

Next up was a thorough metal polishing of the lips. Once the bolts are on, it'll be extremely hard to polish in between the bolts so it's best to give it a decent polish before they get mounted. It's hard to capture it in the pics but the new lips out of the box had some very very fine sand marks in it. Of course this is quite normal unless you paid for a mirror polished product, so the aim of polishing it again yourself is to try and maintain and get rid of those excess hairline scratches. This is the result of two complete thorough polishes (Autoglym's Metal Polish was used):

Once all the lips were polished up, Wheel Wax was applied to the centres. I don't believe we applied it to the lips but we should have, along with the inners. This is just so the wheels have an extra layer of protection and allow for an easier ordeal when it comes to cleaning the wheels.

Once the maintenance was done, it was time to mount the pieces back together using the new black bolts. I'd recommended tightening the bolts with the nuts hand tight (grip on to sockets instead of the bare hardware for better leverage) and ensure they are bolted on in a star pattern. I usually bolt them up in a 4 point star pattern (similar to bolting up a 4-stud wheel). Here are some fancy shots half-way through:

Once all the hand-tightened bolts and nuts are in place, I then use an appropriate torque wrench and torque up the nuts to 24 ft lbs. The bolts are usually held down securely as they should have been done hand-tight already. I had new nuts for one wheel and reused the old nuts for the other three. No Loctite was used but the nuts are holding up fine.

A helper isn't really needed here, but it will definitely make the time go by faster!

Tony helping out with the torquing!

Once all the bolts for all the wheels were torqued down, the next step was to seal. Check out Part 3 here.

BBS RS001 - Part I

2011-10-20T02:08:00.004+11:00

Seems like I'm on a bit of a streak here, one wheel project per year. Fuck I'm lazy.

I finally managed to track down some BBS RS001. I've always wanted to own a cult set of BBS RS, whether it's these 001, 003 (which I actually have a pair of, but more on that when I find another pair), or 301. They were in shitty condition though - lips were oxidised and bent (fortunately the inners aren't out of shape), centres were caked with brake dust and some of the stains aren't washable, the centre plates and hexes are chipped and scuffed and the badges are all scratched. These wheels had a very tough life, but hopefully under my ownership they'll be able to somewhat shine again.

I didn't take any pics when I received them as I was out of a camera for a while, but I recently bought one so I'll be documenting the build process with plenty of pics.

The project officially started a few weeks ago when I placed an order for 15x2" lips from Kirsten @ felgenfuchs.de but more on that later. First thing to do was to disassemble the wheels. 10mm 12pt nuts and 5/16" 12pt bolts. Used an air impact which took no time at all. Knocked off the lips with a couple of hits with a rubber mallet, but the inners didn't want to budge. I ended up keeping them there so they're kinda like a pseudo-BBS RM setup right now. Not the proper way to do things but it'll do.

The bolts were in pretty bad condition, some with bungs in them and some that seem rounded. Don't know if it'll be worth wire brushing all 120 of them down.

I left the wheels aside for a while before coming back to them one sunny weekend to clean them up. I've been spending a minimum of 2 hrs each wheel cleaning them up. Unfortunately, the previous owners seem to have neglected the wheels as there was a lot of dirt and brake dust build up.

A decent clean produced the silver centres but the in-between parts of the spokes were all caked with etched brake dust.

No amount of regular cleaning would remove them, so I decided to use some Scotchbrite pads on them. I knew the finish won't be glossy silver anymore, but I decided to give it a go. The other plan was to just send them to the powdercoaters and have them sodablasted, but I wanted to keep this build as cost-effective as possible.

Note the oxidation and scoring of the hex. What kind of sick person would neglect their BBSs like this?!

A bit of scrubbing quickly eroded the baked bits. Not much of the clearcoat/paint was compromised as a result. The outcome was a little surprising actually - the loss of glossiness gave a satin effect to the silver. The shade became a lot lighter, and in the sun it almost looked white. To be honest, I was quite happy with how they turned out, and I think they look better than the standard BBS silver.

Cleaning the wheels a spoke at a time really allowed me to get up close and notice all the crappy imperfections. Some of the worst were deep gouges. I really don't know how the previous owner damage them so much, he must've decided to throw some pieces of metal at it while they were rolling or something. There were also parts of the paint that the Scotchbrite couldn't take out.

As of this date, I've cleaned two. Will be cleaning the other two some time this week too.

Now back to the lips. I know that I mentioned I wanted this build to be cost-effective, and the purchase of new lips certainly isn't. Well, I was debating for a while whether to get the lips back to perfect shape again and hand polish them myself, but that would be quite a bit of money and a shitload of time anyway, so I thought why not hit two birds with one stone and fork out a little for some new polished - and wider - lips? A mate was rebuilding his set too so we went on a joint buy to save on shipping. Kirsten was a great bloke to deal with, providing us with a good discount on the lips as well as a sweet shipping deal to boot. I'm currently in the works to buy more stuff from him too, some relating to this build, so I'll be keeping this blog updated when that happens.

Anyway, here they are. It was like fuckin' Christmas already.

And I couldn't resist a test fit.

Part II should contain more pics of the clean centres. I'm planning to paint the hexes instead of polishing them as most of them have deep and wide scratch marks. I don't think I'll buy new ones either as it'd just be too expensive. Anyway, black wrinkle paint is the idea at the moment. And also, to tie it all in, I thought some black chrome bolts would match it up nicely. Will see how it all goes.

Art project VII - Show time!

2010-10-08T09:50:00.001+11:00

What a day! The wheels went down a storm (though some were sceptical that they were actually wheels; even some thought they were hub-caps! Sad-face)! Having others colour in the BBS was awesome and most people I talked to really enjoyed it.

Some pics :)

Art project VI - Wheel stands

2010-10-07T11:40:00.002+11:00

Yesterday was immense. I gave Bunnings a quick visit in the morning to get some wood to use for wheel stands. I ended up ditching the idea to use different wood as it was just too hard to get done with the amount of time I had left. I didn't get started on the wheel stands 'til later in the afternoon as I had work for most of the day. Being an unexperienced wood-worker, it took me much longer than anticipated to make the wheel stands, but Dad was at hand to help so I did end up getting some sleep haha. I don't think the neighbours were too happy but there were no complaints!

I didn't take any photos during the whole process though so this entry will not be very interesting, but I did wake up early today to give it a quick paint (have some spare black spray paint lying around) and a test fit to make sure it doesn't tip over or break on me during the Marketplace. We used a lot of Liquid Nail, actual nails and even screws, so it shouldn't fall apart *touch wood*.

Here's some after photos.

A few more hours until my Marketplace commences. I'm pretty damn excited! Hope all goes well and others can appreciate this kind of work :)

Art project V - Polishing

2010-10-05T00:23:00.001+11:00

So I forgot yesterday was a public holiday. The sodablaster wasn't open until today. And gosh am I tired. My back aches, my fingers feels like they're under rigor mortis, and I think I've ingested way too much aluminium particles. But I got it all polished up. And I'm completely drained. Here are some pics. I'm not gonna bother explaining what I did in each step, a brief caption will do.

Back from the powdercoaters. Note the surface:

My working area:

Comparison of lips. After 240 grit sanding vs. raw sodablast.

Close-up of post-240 grit sanding:

Close-up of post-600 grit sanding:

Close-up of post-1500 grit sanding:

I sanded from 240 grit, then moved on to 400, 600, 800, 1000, 1500 and finally 2000.

This was after polishing with black and white compound. Note the smudging:

And finally, finished it off with Mothers Mag Polish:

Comparison of lips. Raw sodablast vs. fully polished:

Far from perfect, but time was against me. I spent too little time with sandpaper grit 240 and 400, hence the leftover scratches you can see between the bolt holes, and the rough spots where the lip bends.

Anyway, tomorrow I do the wheel stands. Hopefully I can get Dad to help me out!

Art project IV - Disassembly and sodablast

2010-09-30T23:25:00.003+10:00

So today I decided to disassemble the Work CV wheel. I had started on polishing the lips a few months back, so I had the hardware taken off. The wheel was in horrible condition though, as I had left it sitting outside. Anyway, it was a really sunny and warm day today so I left the wheel to sit in the sun for about a half hour. With the Work CV, the wheel pieces were arranged with the centre-piece sandwiched between the inner and outer:

You can see the factory sealant between the pieces. I left it in the sun to warm up the sealant so it could come apart more readily. It worked, with some mallet persuasion :)

It was surprisingly easy to take off; the BBS RS wheel I had disassembled about a year ago was impossible (I ended up taking it to a wheel specialist to knock it off for me). The centre-piece took a bit more effort to knock off the inner section though (sealant may have cooled down) but a couple of hard whacks and it was off:

Absolutely no dramas at all, save for the outer piece hitting me in the shin (and bruising it haha) when I was knocking it out. Gotta be more careful next time.

I took all the pieces (including the bits for my BBS RS) to a sodablaster (Advanced Soda Blasting located in Blacktown) to completely strip them all back to clean metal. They'll do an infinitely better job than what I can with a drill and flapper wheel. I'm expected to pick them up tomorrow afternooon :)

Oh, and I also received these in the mail earlier this week :D

I've also decided to only do two wheels. Three wheels will take too long to complete and will also take up too much space. So I'll be ditching the rusted steelie...

Art project III - What to use as wheel display stands?

2010-09-27T01:08:00.003+10:00

I've been thinking about this for a long time. What can I use to hold up the wheels? I did some quick searching and remembered that there have been examples of 3-piece wheels being used as trophies for some car shows. This is a fantastic example:

It's simple, robust, and just looks perfect for a 3-piece wheel. Only problem is that it could be expensive to make as I'm not handy with a welder, nor do I have contacts to get sheet metal readily.

Another cool example that I found used existing car parts:

I don't have spare hubs but I do have rotors lying around, but again, the same issue applies here that was in the first one - welding is required and I'll need 3 of each part to make the stand, which I don't have at home.

I've posted up my dilemma online on some discussion boards I frequent (VWWatercooled Australia, and Wheel-Whores.com). I got some helpful feedback from the former - using wood! I gathered the ideas that were discussed and came up with what you see below (bottom of the picture):

Not very space efficient but it will do the job and will do it cheaply as I can just buy some pieces of MDF from Bunnings and saw + nail away as I've got the tools at home already. Basically it'll look like a mini lectern with a long base. The wheel will be mounted up on the wood plate on the top, angled at around 70 degrees. The wheel will be bolted on through the plate (I will drill some holes). The stand will roughly be 30 cm high, and the base will be long enough to support the weight of the wheel without falling over. Basically there will be three main pieces, and each of them will be nailed in together. I'm still deciding on what the finish of the stand will be. Easy thing to do is to paint each of them black. More time-consuming would be to finish them in a way that is indicative to the wheel they're displaying:

Splintered/aged wood for the rusted stage:

Raw but sanded wood for the prep stage:

Varnished wood (pine? beech? Any wood that has that ring appearance) for the completed stage:

I like where this is heading so far!

Art project II - Changes

2010-09-26T21:07:00.003+10:00

OK I haven't yet started on the project yet (I gotta get my car running first) but I've decided to change a few things. First of all, 4 wheels may be a little excessive and seeing as the venue of this creative depiction project is to be at my regular tutorial classroom, space will be limited. I'm gonna reduce it down to 3 wheels; the sandblasted and prep stage will be combined together. I've decided not to use the SSR Reverse Mesh as I don't have that wheel in my possession.

I did a new sketch:

All 3 will have props. The rusted stage will have a bottle labeled hydrogen peroxide. The prep stage will have assorted sandpaper in different grits. The completed stage will have a ratchet and spanner as well as polishing paste and a rag. The reason for including the ratchet and spanner is that I'm thinking of assembling the polished lip for the completed stage mid-way through the exhibition, after I have a decent amount of "creative input" from others. I don't really want the lips to be streaked with paint either!

I've got approximately a fortnight to knock this project out. Sometime this week I'll have to get the Work Equips and BBS RS sodablasted and start on the polishing. I'll also have some fun destroying the steelie!

Art project - Progression of rebuilding a wheel

2010-09-18T19:22:00.003+10:00

I'm currently enrolled in a BSc course, but as a submajor, I've enrolled in teaching units. The first unit I'm taking under this submajor is "Learning and Creativity". As a part of the unit, I have to produce a creative depiction of what learning and creativity means to me - as a student and, eventually, as a teacher.

I've chosen automotive "art" as my outlet, using wheels as my medium. There's a whole range of things that made me choose this - it'll be unique (comparing with others in my class), it's related to something I'm passionate as well as knowledgeable about, and strangely it really does encompass some of my views in successful learning as well as the possibility to introduce creativity into a teaching lesson. Basically, I'll be creating a display involving a number of wheels through the stages of a rebuild, from being a used (battered and neglected) wheel, through repair and preparation to the final stage of painting and polishing.

Here's a quick sketch of what I'd like to exhibit. These were just ideas I had in my head since Thursday:

I think displaying 4 wheels would illustrate best the 4 main stages when building a wheel. I have 3 different wheels in-house already (from my "collection"); the SSR Reverse Mesh is going to be provided by a friend who offered minutes after my Facebook post about this project haha. Here are the actual wheels in photos:

My Mk4 Golf 15" standard wheels (made from steel so can be rusted out for that "used" effect). Not a 3-piece wheel but it'll best show the tatty-look I'm going for, since I don't think any 3-piece wheels are made in mild steel.

SSR Reverse Mesh - they'll be sandblasted completely, reducing the finish the bare metal with a finish similar to being sanded down by ~100 grit sandpaper (coarse).

Work Equips - these will also be sandblasted, but I'll be following it up with some filler for the centres (if required) and primer. The lips will be partially polished (to show that graduation effect from sandblasted to bare metal to polished up to a mirror finish).

BBS RS - those who know me, know that I consider these the ultimate set of wheels, and it's no surprise I want to use them to portray the finished product. They will be sandblasted, primered and painted in standard wheel silver, and the lips will be polished to a mirror finish.

I can't wait to get this started!

BBS RSII Part 5 - Premature leave

2010-09-18T18:51:00.002+10:00

I ended up selling the wheels soon after SEDF, as well as the adapters. I kept the tyres though. Looks like the big plans I had for the RSIIs ended up being abandoned. Ah well, another set of wheels surely...

BBS RSII Part 4 - Shits and giggles

2010-02-03T08:19:00.003+11:00

Besides white paint and bumper black, I had primer grey and spray putty pink lying around. I was seriously running out of time so getting a good cleared and glossed finish was out, especially with my track record of painting. So I decided to go half grey, half pink :)

Firstly, I had the centres soda-blasted. Saved me the messiness of using paint stripper and hours of sanding:

The finish was damn clean, it was tempting to rock raw alloy, but I would've needed to finish off polishing the lips and I just couldn't be bothered at that point.

On goes the primer grey. The same was done for the pink:

I also pulled apart the centre lock:

And used what I had left of the wrinkle paint:

Bolts were cleaned, taped up and sprayed black (ghetto, I know):

Bolted them back up together, and this was the result (minus tyres):

To be honest, I was going nuts over the grey centre with polished lip, as well as the pale pink of the spray putty.

Anyway, I managed to find those conical bolts for the adapters - I had to have 10 of them shortened for the 15mm adapter as they would poke through and foul on the mounting surface of the rotor. Here are the adapters:

To tie it all up, I had to get a set of no-compromise tyres, something that would stretch beautifully over the 17x8's and provide me the clearance I needed for the rears (sitting at ET10 on stock guards). I found a set of Pirelli Pzero Neros in 195/40R17, a rare size in Australia. 205/40's are readily available but I was going to settle for those.

When I went to pick them up, I was amazed by how small the sidewall looked! But mounted up, they had a nice stretch and looked awesome:

So next was to fit them onto the Mk3 and rock it down to Melbourne:

Rear tyres were raped by the guards though. But like they all say, if you ain't rubbin'...

BBS RSII Part 3 - Polishing metal

2010-02-03T07:50:00.002+11:00

The process was first using the flapper wheel and nylon brush to take out any gunk and level out any minor scratches/gashes. Next was the hand sanding, gradually increasing grits of 120 dry, 240/400/600/800/1000/2000 wet. It is worth noting that wet-sanding provides a harsher sand than dry-sanding of the same grit with the same paper. It's a common misconception - doing a 240 grit dry sand followed by 240 grit wet-sand will be taking a step backward.

Lip @ 400 grit:

Lip @ 1000 grit:

Lip @ 2000 grit:

Next was polish. I bought a kit from Bunnings that was a straight attachment to my drill. Came with black and white polishing compound, as well as the appropriate mops for both.

The black compound, used with the sisal mop, cuts the metal first to take care of any scratches still on the surface after the sanding. The white compound, used with the loose mop, brightens the metal up to give that "mirror-polish" lustre.

After the polishing, I buffed it with Mothers Mag Polish:

This was my first time metal polishing, and the results were far from perfect. There were still quite a few scratches that remained after polishing (though minor). I may have spent too little time with the rough grit sandpaper. Or it could have been the polishing kit being inadequate. My polishing technique could be to blame as well, as my polishing left a lot of black residue on the mops and the metal itself (easily taken out by Mothers Mag Polish though). Could be a combination of the above.

Anyway, the results:

Hard to capture the metal polish and the scratches, but they're the best pics that show it.

The photos were taken by your average consumer pocket camera, as I hadn't bought my DSLR at the time, so this polishing job was done more than a year ago.

Until about 2 months ago, I put this wheel project on the shelf. The polish tarnished a bit, leaving some oxidised markings. But they cleaned up well with another buff of the Mothers polish.

With University enrolment to take care of and a trip to Melbourne to prepare for, I had very little time and money to fulfill my idea of polishing all the barrels perfectly and having the centres powdercoated gold. But with SEDF coming up, I really wanted to fit these wheels on. First of all, I needed adapters so I went to Adaptec Speedware, run by Matt Crooke in the US. Having tried out adapters before, I knew what I wanted this time around and wasted no time ordering them. 5x100 --> 5x112, 15mm pair and 25mm pair and hub-centric to VW hubs and wheels in anticipation of using Audi wheels in the future. Paid ~$450AUD landed for them, which I thought was a fantastic price considering he whipped them up during New Year's for me, and Express-posted them. Paid on X'mas Day, machined, packaged and delivered by the first week of the New Year, there's nothing to complain about really!

Actually there was one thing... instead of having pressed studs on the adapters (so I could just use nuts to hold down the wheel to the adapter), Adaptec tapped threads into the adapter instead. Which actually isn't really a bad thing (even better I think, with safety in concern), but it meant that I had to get my own wheel lugs, as I only have ball-seat lugs and the RSII have conical seats. I'm only complaining cos I didn't reserve enough time to order in custom wheel lugs as the 15mm are seriously thin - a dummy fit with the stock VR6 ball-seat wheel bolts showed that when torqued down tight, the end of the wheel bolt sits just flush on the other side of the adapter... fit was incredibly tight. I actually still on the look-out for suitable conical seat wheel bolts... fingers crossed I'll find them by SEDF.

As for the colour scheme for the wheels, I had to think of something that would be relatively easy to knock out in a couple of days...

BBS RSII Part 2 - The motivation

2010-02-03T07:38:00.005+11:00

Before I go on with the progress, I'd like to add in that I had many ideas for this wheel. First and foremost, I wanted to try out polishing. The rims showed very little signs of damage at first sight, since there was the outer rim guard protecting it. However, as I tried to sand down one of the barrels, it showed ugly bits of its past. I didn't take any bare metal pics of it, but the damage was beyond re-welding new metal in. Talking to another car enthusiast (Chris Preen), I came to realise that re-welding new metal will inevitably leave a mark, even though the surface would be level. See, the material used for the barrel would've been an alloy composition - to repair it and achieve flawless metal polish would mean that the exact same composition of alloy would need to be welded in. Plainly, it would be incredibly difficult to do it.

So anyway, the first idea was to have the barrel polished, and the centre-face powdercoated/painted. Ideas ranged from classic BBS gold:

...or black:

...perhaps colour-coded white:

...or even something wild like red, or blue to match the interior.

As I saw more pics, more ideas flooded in, most of them wild and different to the norm. What about painting the centre black (or some other colour), then machine down the front metal section and polish it?

...or all black w/ polished bolts

...or all white w/ black wheel bolts?

All of the above ideas were great, some even epic, but all of them required a lot of work. Polished lip w/ classic BBS gold centres was the favourite for me, so I proceeded on to polishing the first lip...

BBS RSII Part 1 - Start of a wheel project

2010-02-03T00:48:00.008+11:00

So, I had bought these on eBay about two years ago, reserving them for a major overhaul and bring them back up to better-than-new status. Picked up at Wollongong for $100, not bad.

They're BBS RSII, this particular model the RS702. It has a 5x112 pattern, are 17x8, ET35 all-around, and I'm guessing the centrebore was made to fit Mercedes Benz vehicles. They were a perfect for a B5 A4 previously, so they had hub-centric rings fitted to Audi-spec (57.1mm, which means VW-spec too :D). They're 2-piece, built in the modern way - barrel is one piece, with the centre-face able to come apart. The location of the bolts look a little awkward. I think the guys at BBS thought so too, as they released subsequent two-piece wheels with bolts lined up around the lip, and/or located closer to the spokes to make them less conspicuous. I'm thinking the BBS LM and the RS-GT.

Anyway, all wheels were in similar condition to the above - outer rim was guttered to the shit-house and just generally dirty. Not pictured, but it came with the chrome-logo BBS centre-caps, but like all of them of this vintage, the surface has been heavily oxidised.

Besides those little niggles, the centre-face was in great condition, and the outer-rim was only a "guard", with most of the under surface metal (the actual rim) untouched. However, I found out later than two of them did go through the guard and managed to scrape the metal underneath, and on one incident, scoop up a bit of the metal. More on that later.

So, first order of duty was to disassemble them. First hurdle - finding the right tool for the job. The wheel bolts that hold the pieces together were of the 12-point female kind, known as a "spline"-type bolt. They have been referred to as triple-square, but I have since found that to be incorrect - the triple-squares have a different edge to the indents, more of a "square"-edge than a "point"-edge, as seen in the below pic:

Generic shops didn't have them, which lead me to discover specialist tool shops (I went to VEK Tools in Smithfield). Expensive, but they have every tool that you really need. That said though, the M8 spline bit I got for the wheels along with the bit socket only amounted to $9. Made disassembling the wheels a breeze, and is a must - don't ever think about using allen keys for bolts like these, unless you've got a sick fetish for stripping bolts.

Fuck yeah.

As I undid each and every bolt, I came upon the valve stem - on this wheel design, it doubles as a wheel bolt to hold the pieces together as well. It uses a larger hole, so there's no need to make markings on the centres and barrels when pulling them apart - they only go back together one way. The wheels came with a screw-in device that acts as the stem that protrudes out of the wheel to allow air to be inflated through using conventional tools. Furthermore, they come with a screw-in cap to give a smoother look of the overall wheel. Very cool, first of its kind I've come across. (Pics of the stems in Part 3.)

Once all the bolts were taken out, separating the pieces was next. Two wheels came out easy - a soft knock on the hub mount face was all it took to pop it out.

However, the other two was a bitch and a half - someone had separated them before, squeezing a shitload of unrequired sealant between the two pieces. I tried everything - standing on them, jumping on them, leaving them out in the sun before jumping on them, untold number of whacks with the mallet. But still to no avail. I decided to take them to Peter @ OZwheel out in St Marys (Minchinbury now) as I had to get some wheels re-rolled. He used what look like a punch and a hammer, gave three-or-four heavy whacks and they came out like nothing. You could imagine my face watching him do something in 5 seconds with successful results in what took me 5 weeks that resulted in a mashed mallet. Anyway, he charged me nothing for that, so all was good.

Once the centres were out, I could rip out the outer rim guard. It was a flexible thin metal piece that had a chrome finish. Not easy at all to take out as it was sealed on. Took a couple of thick screwdrivers and some pliers to wedge out. Each consecutive one seemed to be harder to get off as the previous one.

I may have scuffed the surface of the rim a little bit, but I managed to sand them out.

Ah yes, the sanding...

Plenty of hours wasted scraping the gunk off, then hitting it with the flapper wheel and nylon brush 'til I saw shiny metal.

Feedback from customer

2009-09-26T02:01:00.003+10:00

I sold off those Boss 5 spokes via eBay a while back (late June) and had received feedback from the guy that I didn't post up here. Anyway, this is what he said:

G'day Raymond,

i've just received the rims and all is good. I'm very happy with the condition they're in and although i haven't fitted them to my car (95 civic) yet, they look great next to it. Thankyou for your prompt responses and for making my first ebay experience smooth and stress free.

Yours Sincerely

Justin C

His comment made my day!

So anyway, lack of updates are due to working on my Mk3 Golf. Still working on it, and hoping to finish before mid-November comes (DOVW in Melbourne and rego is due). However, I've two wheel projects that I've started - the aforementioned 17" 2-piece BBS RS702, and also a mate's (probably soon to be mine?) 16" Volk CVs. Stashed away is a set of stock Mk3 VR6 stock BBS wheels, generic 7-spoke 16" wheels, 16" Alpina replicas I'm picking up soon and a single BBS RS wheel (for shits and giggles). Next update may be during X'mas time.

Boss 5 spokes

2009-05-28T00:41:00.008+10:00

These were my sister's old wheels. Some bad gutter rashes as well as air impact damage. Some deep scratches here and there too. Also some ghastly stains probably caused by baked on CV grease. Those stains are starting to appear on her new wheels too; I think I'll have to check out the condition of the CV boots on her car soon! Baked on brake dust as well but they're very tame compared to those grease marks. Centre-caps were pretty oxidated too - broke them while taking them off (it's like the tabs were potato chips) so they'll be gone after the refurbish.

Before pics:

Baked on grease:

Baked on brake dust and light gutter rash (some heavy gashes in other sections as well):

Grease spots and air impact damage:

Prep:

Sanded back to metal on damaged areas:

Used fibreglass filler for metal to repair the gashes and scrapes:

Got a bit excited around the edge though:

60/120/240 grit dry sanding to level out filler:

Ready for primer:

Etch primer (Concept Paints) mixed with thinner in 5:1 ratio. Came out of the gun clean:

240 grit dry sand followed by spray putty (Concept Paints; same mixing ratio) over unlevel sections and scratches, followed by 240 grit dry sand again:

Primer again. Gun was exhibiting a spitting pattern but that was due to not oiling the spray gun components (I know better now):

Some imperfections that will show up after the top coat. Due to not enough filler in some sections, and a few accidental chips while moving the wheels around:

Paint & Polish:

Used wheel silver (Concept Paints). Their other acrylic products are not mixed and assuming it was the same for the wheel silver, I used a 1:1 mixing ratio. Paint came out as viscous as thinner but I went ahead to spray anyway. First pair I painted:

There were lots of air bubbles in the pot. Paint was extremely runny. Silver particles did not seem to mix in very well, gotta make note to mix very thoroughly before shooting it.

High sections came out bad. Hard to see in the following photo though, but there's some light streaks:

Worst section of the first pair. Two possible culprits - inadequate sanding in this section of the primer, or maybe caused due to runny paint? Looks a little like orange peel:

Best outcome of the first pair:

There were also small blobs (specks) of paint that landed on the surface. Didn't take pics of them but they could be seen in the overview pics.

For the last two, I used a 5:1 mixing ratio. The orange peel effect is even more apparent with these two. However, paint did come out less runny and there were less specks of paint. To be honest, the last two came out much worse than the first two. I'm pretty shocked. I guess I'll try a 2:1 mixing ratio next...

After:

Had let the paint to dry for 3+ days. Used polishing compound, followed by ScratchX then finally WheelWax. Not much difference:

You can easily see the difference between the two pairs. The smooth finish was achieved using 1:1 mixing ratio, and the rough finish was due to the 5:1 mixing ratio. Polishing has removed the specks mentioned before when using 1:1 mixing ratio, but the roughness of the last two couldn't be polished out. Texture is smooth for both though.

From far away, the only tell-tale sign that they have different finishes is that the rough-looking pair have a more satin finish, whereas the smooth-looking pair have a glossy finish

... and ...

versus...

Can you tell the difference?

All photos @ my Photobucket.

Next up I'll be polishing the lips of my BBS RSII.