Had these wheels fitting around for a few years, 15x7" Work Meister CR-01s, and finally gotten round to starting to refurbish them, and will be documenting this as I go along. Likely to be an extended project.
I know these wheels had been previously refurbished in 2008, with new chrome German rim bolts. How they looked in 2009:
Don’t look so clever now
Essentially, pretty every bolt has rusted. The centres had been powdercoated, and then lacquered. The lacquer has chipped and lifted, with the powder coat ruined underneath. The corrosion on the barrels is superficial, and will soon polish up. One wheel has minor kerbing, that will likely file out. Another wheel has gouges on an inner barrel, that may need a bit of a Tig weld, but the rim is straight.
First step is to loosen the rim bolts, break any corrosion stiction. I have a suitable 12 sided socket for this. And then using a cordless drill to undo the nuts. A slight complicating factor was during a previously, every nut was coated in silicone (completely unnecessary). When removing, make you take the first bolt out, as a handy reference point. The bolts will either fall out, or, more likely, just stick in place. There are 40+ bolts per wheel.
Next you have to cut through the silicone seal. These Work wheels are outer barrel-centre-inner barrel. With a sharp knife, slice through the silicone, down to the centre, on both edges of the centre. The using various scrapng implements, remove the silicone to expose the centre. A commercial silicone sealant remover was useless.WD40 seemed to work.
The best of the recovered bolts.They’re all junk. The shanks were ok, but the chrome had poor resistance to road salt
Separating the centres from the barrels required a lump hammer and a block of wood. There is metal to metal stiction, plus during a previous refurb, silicone sealant had been used between the surfaces. I think it might be better to reassemble dry, with clean mating surfaces.
The outer barrel comes off easy, two blows and its off. The inner barrel needs more pounding. Though strangely, the last one just popped off.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbBFSoePs5w
Plan is to:
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Shot blast the centres, likely paint them silver
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Remove silicone from barrels (find a way to dissolve the silicone). Polish the outer up. Paint the inner barrel
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Replace bolts, probably with black bolts
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Source spigot rings and centre caps. The centres are 60mm. Work centres are £30-50 each. So need to find a generic subsitute.
DSCN3808 by Andrew Thompson, on Flickr