Alloys Refurbishment

I am taking the wheels to “Pristine” in Woburn tomorrow for their refurbishment.  They are suffering from the typical corrosion of old alloys, especially the odd-one-out Discovery wheel which suffered more because its face and rim were diamond cut after it had been sprayed in Anthracite grey to give it it a two-tone grey/machined alloy finish.  Of the set of five silver/Ardennes green alloys I first got from a scrapped LSE, three of them have been sprayed roughly with aerosols to assess various schemes.  The one I have chosen is the silver with matt black centre, using the original scheme on the wheels as they were coordinated on the LSE but matching the colouring scheme of the 109.

I have found a way of fitting the centre caps to the rear wheels, where the Salisbury’s plastic cones have until now protruded.  By welding the outside of the splined joint between shaft and drive flange in the same way as is common in South Africa, I can omit the plastic cones.  I can either cut the shafts ends along the circlip groove to get rid of the excess length or just push the uncut shafts in flush (once I verify that this will not advesely affect spline overlap in the diff gears).  The shafts will be flush with the conical middle of the drive flange, which fits beneath the alloy’s centre-cap with the 6mm spacers used on the hub.  This welding mod seems to work well in South Africa, so should work for me too.  It will effectively make the shafts and flanges comparable to (though much stronger than) the original RRC/Discovery integrated shafts and flanges or the shafts/flanges used on D90s.

Turn-around on the wheels is normally three days, but I’m not in that much of a hurry, so will collect them in a week or two.