wecycle

Has anyone polished a set of the early "waffle" wheels?
How did they come out?
Any pictures or proceedure advice?
They look like a fair copy of the Italian Campagnolo wheels used on Ferraries and Maseratis of the 70's. Just not in polished aluminum/magnisium.

ChasRX

I've got early 'waffle' wheels that I've sandblasted. There sitting on a shelf in the garage atm. I take a photo of them and post it, tomorrow.

wecycle

Great I would like to see them. Are you planning to polish them? My thought is that they would look very cool in a sort of retro or period correct sort of way if they were polished aluminim.
Dennis L. cote, Delhi, CA

Wankelguy

Are you talking about polishing the centers as well as just the lip? 'Cause they'd take a hell of a lot more work than most people would wanna do.

Yark79

Yeah, that would take a hell of a lot of time. It takes for ever just for me to clean mine, I couldn't imagine polishing them. I got another question though, and this one might sound kind of weird, but... is it possible to widen the stock wheels? I thought it would be cool to have some waffle wheels with like a one inch lip, making the car's stance a little more agressive looking, but still keeping the retro style.

trochoid

iTrader: (6)

Powdercoat them. No polishing and little to no maintinance.

ChasRX

Well, I need to move my generator to actually get to the wheels from the rack. Sorry for being so lazy =)
Powder coating would be the thing to do. Perhaps even nickel-plating...

7aull

iTrader: (2)

Just remember that if you powdercoat, you might want to protect the chrome/steel ring around the lug bolt hole because when they blast the wheel it will remove the shine off these, and once coated, you won't be able to polish them out. I bought some big metal washers with a thru-bolt and the the washers covered the ring, preventing the blasting and the powder from getting to them. Likewise you will lose the polished outer rim effect to unless you protect it somehow.... haven't quite figured that one yet...
Stu Aull
80GS
Alaska

t_g_farrell

iTrader: (1)

I would use the Eagle1 aluminum wheel etching product on em and then maybe powder coat or paint them as required. The etching stuff really works well but its not so aggressive, so you can do it in stages until you get the aluminum to look exactly like you want. Its basically an acid that east at the stuff on the wheel but doesn't react as fast with the aluminum.

There's a debate ( maybe only in my own mind :-) about whether the center part was painted from the factory or not.

I've got a set of these wheels to redo as a winter project and thats how I'm going to approach it. I thought about blasting them but I want to keep the shiny parts intact as much as possible.