Repainting P02 wheel covers -- any advice?

[Terry B.]

Re: Repainting P02 wheel covers -- any advice?

Paul, I restored my PO-1's but not nearly to the level that you did. You should consider what you would charge for restoration as you are a skilled craftsman. I have never seen a brand new P0-1 or 2 but I believe your restoration could be better than what they were new. Very nice work.

Terry

[Bob W.]

Re: Repainting P02 wheel covers -- any advice?

Terry, I agree with you 100% they look as good as or better than new. I would be interested in having a set restored.

Bob

[Gary S.]

Re: Repainting P02 wheel covers -- any advice?

How about a Restorer article with photos, descriptions, materials, etc?

Gary

[Ron G.]

Re: Repainting P02 wheel covers -- any advice?

I have to say they look great. I have never seen it done before. Nice job!!! I agree with Gary S., that you should consider doing an article for the Restorer.

[Bob B.]

Re: Repainting P02 wheel covers -- any advice?

You did a outstanding job, I am guessing you spent 5 hours per wheel more or less ??? curious

Well done
Bob

[Larry M.]

[Paul S.]

Re: Repainting P02 wheel covers -- any advice?

I am guessing you spent 5 hours per wheel more or less ??? curious

I didn't really keep track closely, but I would say closer to 8 hours per wheel. The masking and painting alone took about 5 hours.

[Paul S.]

Re: Repainting P02 wheel covers -- any advice?

It’s difficult to tell from the photos, but it looks like there are approximately 76 fins that needed to be masked.
So you needed to cut 76 pieces of masking tape to the exact length and then make 152 cuts with a leather tool to produce rounded ends. I applaud your efforts.
Would you mind posting a picture and/or specifics of the tool?
Excellent work.

Larry

Correct. I will post some details and photos of the tape preparation process later today when I get home. It took me a while to come up with a way to cut the rounded ends on each piece of tape, but in the end, this method worked really well and was not too difficult.

[Paul S.]

Re: Repainting P02 wheel covers -- any advice?

Paul, super job they look like brand new caps. In your first post you said you removed the dents how? I can not find a way to get to them from the back side. Also where in Pa do you live as I'am from the North east part of the state.

Very small dents can be sanded/polished out. To remove larger dents, the metal "skin" of the outer rim needs to be peeled back so that you can get to the back side. Paul's Chrome in Evans City, PA helped me with that part. Besides chrome, they do stainless restoration. I happen to live a few miles from them, so that makes it easier.

[Bob B.]

Re: Repainting P02 wheel covers -- any advice?

I am not suprised at 8 plus hours PER CAP, lets say at body shop or restorarion shop rate of $50. a hour (accurate ?) by the time paint and materials get paid we are looking at roughly $2,000. a set OUCH plus chroming
But they sure do look great Congats.
Bob

[Paul S.]

Re: Repainting P02 wheel covers -- any advice?

I am not suprised at 8 plus hours PER CAP, lets say at body shop or restorarion shop rate of $50. a hour (accurate ?) by the time paint and materials get paid we are looking at roughly $2,000. a set OUCH plus chroming
But they sure do look great Congats.
Bob

There really isn't any re-chroming involved. The outer (bottom) part of the wheel is all raw stainless and can be polished-up to a like-new finish. The center insert that goes on top of it is chromed, but only the edges of its fins show, so they generally look fine if they are simply cleaned. (As discussed above, the black in between those fins can be repainted pretty easily if necessary as well.) If your center fin sections are in such bad shape that the chrome edges are pitted or peeling, I'd strongly recommend finding a better set rather than having them re-chromed. Finally, the center caps have some chrome on them, but again, it is more economical to replace those with new reproductions from Trim Parts rather than trying to restore originals. In this case, the reproductions are indistinguishable from the originals. (They appear to have been made on the original tooling.)

[Paul S.]

Re: Repainting P02 wheel covers -- any advice?

As requested, here are some more photos and details about the masking method I used.

First, I laid out rows of the 1/8 inch vinyl 3M tape on a cutting sheet:


Then, I used this leather-cutting tool to cut 2-inch pieces with rounded ends:

[Paul S.]

Re: Repainting P02 wheel covers -- any advice?

Then, of course, comes the fun of applying all of them to the fins:


I'm not going to say it is easy, but it isn't as hard as you might think. It just takes a lot of patience and persistence.

By the way, I now have 3 of the 4 wheel covers done.