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Old 24th March 2022, 07:42 AM
MikkiJayne MikkiJayne is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2012
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If the aluminium trim is still smooth and shiny then it can usually be brought back to 80% with some heavy cut compound and a microfibre or wool pad, and then refined to 85-90% with your metal polish of choice. It takes a bunch of passes, and something like an iBrid Nano, or the Sealey mini polisher is perfect. Treating with wax further enhances the shine as it fills in the pores in the anodising, but obviously that needs more maintenance than ceramic. I haven't tried ceramic coating the trim yet - thats on my list, ideally before the barnfind goes in for coating.

If the trim is matt and rough to the touch it won't recover and needs replacing. In those cases, send them to me so I can blast and powdercoat them gloss black

It turns out quite a lot of the trim is still available on Tradition, although not quite all of it. I haven't checked prices though.

The same applies to the mirrors by the way - you can go hard on them with any kind of compound you like. Just don't go near them with any kind of sandpaper as that will permanently change the finish and won't be recoverable. The mirror base which attaches to the door responds well to plastic polish and sealant.

Re the wheels, your wheel guy will regret accepting that challenge about halfway through the first wheel The factory finish is painted barrels and inner spokes, raw blasted details between the spokes, and a semi-polish on the front face (*not diamond cut). It must have been a crazy complicated process, and the only way we can think of to replicate it is to 3d print some inserts to go between the spokes to mask off the sandblasted detail while painting the barrels, then machine polish the front of the spokes, then lacquer the whole thing. We think the factory must have had some sort of moulded insert to fillin the spokes, hence printing new versions, because masking all that detail by hand is practically impossible. Even with moulded inserts its going to be quite a labour-intensive process.

One thing to be aware of is that many of these wheels have been diamond cut several times and now don't have enough metal left to do it again without losing the detail. Add the damage from any corrosion and it may not even be possible to recover them to original since the base wheel isn't up to it. Problem is, you won't find that until you strip them. I have a few in that state.

The original colour is Avus Silver Z17 - not available in powdercoat, so I generally have wheels wet painted in Avus and then powder lacquer. On an FE wheel that actually doesn't matter since its only the edges of the spokes and the inners which are painted, so any fairly flat silver will do. You'll never be able to tell if its not quite Avus.
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