# Another wheel refurd/guide 18" penta



## aiky007 (May 16, 2009)

This procedure is time consuming, a significant amount of prepartion, is essential for the job to be done correctly if your not wanting to put the work in then it would be better to get a pro restore.
*The Start*








After the wife had a couple of minor!!! Accidents with kerbs, three of the alloy wheels on my 2005 Astra SRI are looking pretty bad. The car has 18" penta alloys which have a power silver finish, which is very hard to match. 
I managed to buy a used penta alloy wheel off Ebay for the grand price of £16. The wheel was already stripped back to the bare alloy which saved me a lot of work & time.This was to be a full wheel refurb front ,back & inner rim so was going to take a lot more paint to complete

Having got quotes from various refurbishment companies' I decided to have a go myself with the spare wheel.
I bought all my paints from a professional body shop suppliers using U-pol for most of the priming and clear coat.
(Note. My brother is a spray painter with Vauxhall & could have got him to refurb them for me but wanted to try myself.)

Materials used.

The materials used are as follows
•	280 wet & dry
•	800 wet & dry
•	1000 grit wet & dry
•	1200 grit wet & dry
•	2500 grit wet & dry (for wet sanding lacquer)
•	3000 grit wet & dry (for wet sanding lacquer) 
•	U-Pol etch primer
•	high build primer(grey)
•	U-Pol high build primer beige
•	Tack cloth's 
•	Custom mixed paint (paint code D 769 TINTER)
•	U-Pol clear lacquer
•	Chemical metal filler
•	Wax & grease remover.
ooh yes one road cone

*Cleaning*
The first step, and absolutely crucial to the process, is to give it a thorough clean. I used a wax & grease remover to give it a clean all over, and a tooth brush to clean in the crevices. 
Again, I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to get this stage right.
*Sanding down & Etch priming*
Next, it was time to sand down the wheel for a good key this was important for the etch primer. I used 400 grade wet and dry paper to do the majority of the work. Then gave it a coat of etch primer before using a small amount of metal filler.








*etch primer 1st coat then rubbed down*








*Filling in any imperfections*
I next used Chemical metal to fill in any imperfections and then used 280 grit paper to make it as smooth as possible. filling in any ding, scratch's kerbed damage etc. Once I was satisfied with the finish the 2nd coat of etch primer was sprayed onto the bare metal, cleaning before each step.

*chemical filler applied then rubbed down.*

*Applying the primer*
. The filler primer is designed to improve adhesion between the etch primer and the final topcoat paint and also helps fill in the imperfections better. I applied one coat of primer. I allowed it to dry, checked for imperfections, before removing these using more wet & dry 800 grit, once happy I then applied another one coat of grey primer again rubbing down before applying two coats of beige primer(reason for the change in color of primer is to help when sanding back down not to strike thru to far on the other coats.








*grey primer 2nd coat*








*beige primer 2nd coat*








*prep finished ready for base coat*

*Appying the silver top coat*
I used a custom mixed silver paint as the top coat, spoke to my brother for the best match. It is imperative that this is applied very thinly, so that it does not run. Although it is tempting to paint large amounts at a time, this will cause a poor appearance, and it's possible that the paint will run. I applied three coats, leaving around 15 to30 minutes between each layer to flash off. There is no need to wet sand the base coat before applying the clear.








*base coat after three coats.*

*Applying the clear top coat*
As the clear coat is going to be the thing exposed to the road and stone chips and also give's the wheel its shine, it's important to get this right. This must be applied within 30 mins of the base coat being applied (if not there's a good chance of the clear coat peeling off) I chose to apply five coats of clear, allowing about 15 to 30 minutes between each layer. Again, the coats should be thin so that the lacquer can't run also if its applied to thick or to soon then it won't flash off correctly which can cause air bubbles to be trapped in the clear coat, if this happens then it will have to be rubbed down again & reapply both base coat and clear so be warned take your time and don't apply it to thick.









*Wet sanding*
The reason I gave the wheel five coats of clear was because I wanted to get as near to factory finish as possible, which would mean wet sanding.
Start by using 1200 grit. Lot's of soapy water to keep it nice and slick. I stopping very 6 strokes making sure everything looked ok.
Then using 2500 grit went over everything again, same as before. Once happy with the finish applied cutting compound to bring up the finish
*The final result*
























Its not 100% factory perfect, the resulting finish is not far off, and unless you're looking at the wheel very hard, it looks pretty convincing.
I'm belighted with the finished wheel and the feeling of doing it is bloody great.
Happy for any comments


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## alan burnett (Aug 21, 2007)

nice work looks good


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## k1rkyc (Oct 20, 2009)

Nice one - I have the same wheels and unfortunately bought the car with 1 alloy scuffed - wanna do mine? lol


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## Planet Man (Apr 12, 2008)

Great work:thumb:


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## Deeg (Mar 30, 2009)

Great job there, I once tried to refurb a set of my old alloys a while back but it wasn't anywhere near as good a finish as that so i ended up getting it done by a pro.


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## dominic32 (Jul 13, 2009)

great job :thumb: i have got to do my wheels


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## Phil H (May 14, 2006)

excellent work!


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## aiky007 (May 16, 2009)

Thanks for the comments guys:thumb:, the photo's don't do the job/wheel justice:wall: something i'll have to improve on in the future.


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## little john (Jun 10, 2007)

Ive done one of these and have 3 more to do the 5th wheel is ok as its new then again one of the others is new but trashed. anyway getting the finish the same as the original is really tough. I think I will do it again when all the others are done and it goes in the boot to be the spare.


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## aiky007 (May 16, 2009)

little john said:


> Ive done one of these and have 3 more to do the 5th wheel is ok as its new then again one of the others is new but trashed. anyway getting the finish the same as the original is really tough. I think I will do it again when all the others are done and it goes in the boot to be the spare.


I done a lot of research on the original finish before starting this refurb and there is no way i was going to be able to do the power silver finish that the original has as the black base coat has to be perfect before the top silver coat go's on as its slightly translucent. So after talking with my brother decided to go for the nearest basecoat silver. I've not tried it up against the original wheels yet,so can't comment on how close the match is,but i don't really care since i will be doing the rest shortly.


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