Ronals, a project so far.....

Possibly not anyones favourite wheels,but a write up off the project I took on for my young sister....

got these forever ago to polish for my sister Rachels old 6n,acid dipped them to get the old coating off


satin mopped them to get all the crud off


manky job


rudimentary polish to check how they'd come up




a lil plastic stumbling block


sourced rachel a block of billet and got it cut into four squares,one got turned down by the old guy next door




virgin like and still untouched


17" eta beta twist lips provided inspiration,reigniting an old plan to multi-piece a spare set of 15" pirelli's I had which petered out

 

gave my sisterl the 15" starks as a subterfuge for her 21st back in december but still struggled over engineering a solution till a mate solved all my problems,lathe tool in picture inside barrel but the way ahead was clear so I Al Quieda'd the barrels off with a ghetto 5" grinder...tool of the gods




metal pubes


ground the barrel out to suit the centre




four centres rears done


taking the first centres OD down to match the barrels OD


mucking about




test fit off lip with the centres face partially turned down




all four rears done....celebrate

 

bears face turned down slightly more,centre partially drilled,dry built for trials








pedo'ing about




revealed and test fit at the central meet at a friends garage for my sisters b'day

 

re-engineered the lathe tool to do the fronts


double checking the OD's


with the worlds biggest verniers


all four centres ready for drilling


with the amazing lathe tool(i <3 Arun)






ground the rest of the barrels down to suit


up to date at time,final specs then were 4x100,7x15,et25

 

Had to wait on my sister to get bolts and nuts but at the time was doting about on the lips. Kinda said already about how bad the donor lips were due to the old face mounted set up but they really were tremendously bad. Hacked a good skim off on the linishing table on the bolt platform the sateen'd them to death on the bolt face and the lip then DA'd them to get them semi-non-tramlined-to-hyphenated-hell,then re-sateened them lightly to take out the linishing and DA marks with three differently shaped mops and a coarse first stage menzernac 'grey'(thin skinny 3 section 1/4" one for the tight 90' onto the flat lip,1/2" section to reduce that gouge and do the bolt face and a 2" section for the flat lip and the roll over section),went back over with four coarse tight stitched coarse flat and shaped mops(1 - 1/2" sect for the 90',2 - 2" section for the flat lip and bolt face,3 - shaped mop for the roll over,4 - 3" section for angled work on the flat lip to spread the pores and reduce dragging,then a 3" loose mop with again some first stage menzerna 'grey' to get to this....





basically almost ready to start a proper polish on,the four lips so far now have @ 28hours prep alone but this was purely down to their bad starting condition

ps - decided to break up my 7" donor splits I had for my mk1 to donate two lips to make the bear splits 7" and 7.5"s as opposed to the planned 7" all round with the 6.5" carving lips. Thought seeing as my jetta will never ever be finished and these are turning out to be her birthday presents for the rest of her life I may as well make them staggered to boot

 

Spent the other day drilling this up...








was an absolute ballache,basically I have to..........

loosely build the wheel,centre the lip,tighten,mark hole,dissasemble,pilot drill,reassemble,check hole is central,dissasemble,drill out to take an M7,repeat from start..........

35 times got one out the road today then noticed the two narrower wheels once the first bolt is tightened you cant get any of the remaining nuts on due to the shape of the tyre bowl so going to have to remachine the other two off the wider set of barrels as well :/

 

start of the second wheel...........

centre face down on bench and barrel fitted,line up the barrels valve with the valve hole from the teddy 'centre',mark hole on the nearest spoke of the bears reverse with heavily modified pencil


drill with 2mm drill bit


'build' wheel,centralise lip,check drilled hole with location of barrel/lip hole,dissasemble johnny 5

drill out hole to 3.5mm


'build' wheel,centralise lip,check drilled hole with location of barrel/lip hole,drill out to 5.5mm


'build' wheel,centralise lip,check drilled hole with location of barrel/lip hole,drill out to 7.5mm


repeat on opposite side then repeat round circumference...........

mostly done




was getting there.................

 

opening up the valve hole




started polishing up the studs


but had to stop because it was a friday and it was a half day....got about a wheel and a halfs worth of bolts started though


couple pics my sisters bf took




just awaiting paint and some lip refinishing now,like I said.....not everyones favourite wheels but been a a bit of fun for myself

 

not particurlarly a fan of 'teddies', but............. AWESOME work!!!

 

I love teddies, they just needed to be a bit less 'cuddly' Those rims do that perfectly. Well done!

 

epic amount of work, well done for continuing to see it through!

 

That is just amazing work! They're gonna look awesome, a real one-off

 

can you drill some holes where the eyes are and fit flashing red leds? Then they would be epic!

 

Glowing eyes wont be happening lol. Thanks for the response I wanted to do something special for her 21st and when I surprised her with the first one she was over the moon. Theyve been a long road and I had to split up two sets of wheels to make them for her but I'm still probably as eager as her to see them finished properly

 

Fair play to you. That is a project and a half.

I'd really recommend anyone spending time with a grinder or polisher gets a mask though. You can get decent ones from Screwfix for a few quid. They really reduce the amount of crud one breathes in.

 

Awesome work! Teddys look tougher already but a handlebar tash in place of that cute smile would nail it. Think sis will love 'em as they are though!!

 

Im a pipefitter/fabricator to trade so I should know better The tash idea might not be far off the mark when I make the billet caps For now theyre going to get finished in paint with the plastic caps then when the caps are made ill redo them... this is obviously all her birthdays for the rest of her life

 

Top work Daz

Id love your Autostrada monza's even though I have nothing to fit them to! lol

 

Blimey, a very original idea and immense effort!

 

They are the coolest wheels i've ever seen!!!!