If You Painted Your Rims

I have read too many times where vehicles, with fresh restorations, had wheels fall off. The reason... the fresh paint on the rims prevents the lug nuts from binding.

Andy Holmes, in a recent email, felt this may have been the issue in his recent accident (Luckily he was OK) :

http://rebuildmyghia34.blogspot.com/2009/09/happenings-since-may.html

Much of my free time today was scraping off the paint from the lug nut contact points on the rims. I even wire brushed the nuts to make ensure there would be clean metal to metal contact. The rounded knife, used in the process, worked well.

Don't forget to do your spare tire too.

Painted The Hub Caps Today

At the '09 VW Classic this year I mentioned to Everett Barnes that I was having trouble painting the emblems on my early T3 hub caps. I didn't want to use the decals that are available and painting them by hand with masking tape wasn't working out.

The solution he gave was so simple. The final product looked the same as my NOS hub caps.

All one has to do is mask them as in the below photo:
Next, spray paint the exposed section with a satin black paint (this appears to be what VW used on the NOS caps I have). Remove the newspaper and tape immediately.
The piece of wood in the above photo has a sturdy paper shop towel stapled tightly to a piece of wood. The towel is saturated, but not dripping, with acetone.

Note: Wear rubber gloves and keep that garage door wide open to avoid strong fumes!

Rub the wood many times, in different directions, over the cap making sure that every pass come in contact with a clean piece of towel. Below is a photo of my practice cap after one coat. I had to do two to complete the project.

Fired Up! Yeah!

Installed the wiring harness. Everything but the turn signals and horn are working. Will take a couple of days to figure that out.

Took a risk and poured in 5 gallons of premium gas into the tank and turned the ignition key.

After 25 years the engine started right up! The sound of the 1500 engine was very soothing. I sure missed that sound.

The yellow bulbs in the Marchal headlights and fog lights made the garage glow.