Peter Simpson
911 Carrera 3.2 Targa
Sport
Year: 1989
Mileage: 105,957
Current Mods:
Sent the wheels off for a refurb at Spit & Polish. New tyres fitted and fitted a 911Chips front strut brace.
| This month I decided to get the
wheels refurbed, as they have had some kerbing over the years from
previous owners. They were completely original – still anodised from
the factory. The choice was to have them re-anodised or go for
something different and a lot cheaper. You can imagine what I went for
(cheap) and, in my opinion, this was the best option as they look much
better than the factory look. The car went up on axle stands, the locking nuts and alloy nuts were removed, and the wheels were ready to go off to be refurbed, and off I went down to Spit & Polish, in Kent. While I was there, Damian showed me around the factory and then he had a look at the wheels. After checking them, he noticed that one of the front wheels had a chunk out of it, so it needed to go off for alloy welding. Once this has been done, they are machined back so the rim appears as new, with no damage. The machine team noticed that these were original wheels and had never been refurbed before. They also said that the Fuchs wheel is good for about four refurbs, depending on who does the work and how much is taken from the rim. This is why they were pre-checked, just in case they were past the stage of re-furbing. If they were too thin on the outer rims they could possibly give way under pressure – and you wouldn’t want that with a car coming towards you. Once the wheels have been stripped in the chemical dip for a few hours, they are then hung up on a tree-shaped stand to be shot-blasted with a very fine shot. This is a very expensive process, but the finish on the wheels when they reappear is amazing – they come out bare and they look like you’ve just bought them. Next is the powder-coating stage and the wheels are re-hung and move along a kind of mono-rail system in and out of ovens to dry the paint. The powder-coating can be reapplied, if necessary, while the wheels are on this device, and I opted at this stage for a gloss black finish. Once they are dry, they are then taken into the area where all the machining is done. It seems that a lot of the time, with different shape wheels, templates have to be made to follow the contours of the wheels. These are then diamond-cut with a very fine cut. I asked for my Fuchs to have a bare diamond-cut rim with gloss black centres. Then new Nankang tyres (sister co to Dunlop) were fitted and the wheels balanced, which is all done in-house. When I got the wheels back on the car they completely transformed its looks, along with giving me a lot more grip on the roads. http://www.spitandpolish.co.uk/ |
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