Brand new 27 yo wheels

[zeroaffinity]

Hi. I haven't posted on a while, but I've been steadily working away on my 1980 GS850G. I recently finished working on the wheels and I thought I would show them off since they came out so well.

The story is that the bike is supposed to have a 17" rim on the rear and my bike had a 16". Shocks were smaller too. Must have been a short rider. Anyway, I got a new wheel, refinished it, and here are the before/after pix:

Before (not the same wheel, but it was in exactly the same condition)

After

The After pic has a rotor I found on eBay, new rubber, and an alternative retainer clip. The valve stem had to come from a Ducati since, apparently, valve stem holes much bigger these days. Pricey, but it looks nice!

Other things I have done or bought and will soon be done:
* drag bar
* bar-end mirrors
* boyer-bransden digital ignition
* Jardine exhaust (coming soon)
* all new brake lines
* rebuilt carb
* pods
* bobber gas tank (still not crazy about this, may change)
* custom seat

... gotta do something with the tail. You'll notice about a foot has been hack sawed off. I think I'm going to but a guard under the seat to protect the guts, but leave it as is otherwise. Need to construct a simple lights/tag bar where the frame is cut and exposed.

Anyway, thanks for looking.

[renobruce]

The wheels look nice. What kind of paint did you use? Did you use a primer first? I'm working on my wheels right now, too. I'm re-painting the inside black portion.

[zeroaffinity]

I didn't paint them myself. In fact, this was tricky, so it's good you ask. I took the wheels to a shop and they cleaned, stripped, primered, and painted the wheel. Then the paint literally fell of. I took it back and said WTF, dude? To make a long story short, they redid that wheel four times before they found the right kind of primer. Some sort of acid etching primer. The paint was the same all four times. They said they've been using it for years and it's high quality. The redo porsche wheels with it. As you can see, it's a matte black with no clear.

It cost me $100/wheel to have them painted. I'd recommend you do that given the problems this shop had. They said they thought it was probably a strange magnesium alloy. Good luck.

[renobruce]

Interesting info. I hope my paint doesn't fall off! :shock: I first polished the rings and webs, stripped, cleaned with acetone, masked, primered, and painted. I used high-temp engine primer and paint. I guess time will tell if it holds up. It seems good right now.

[zeroaffinity]

That looks great! Yeah, if the paint doesn't fall off, then you'll have a great looking set of wheels. I was able to tell immediately. After they redid the wheel the second time, the first thing I did was pull out my keys and drag one lightly down the centerline. Seriously, the paint just flaked off. It's like they coated it in vegetable oil before painting it. It's fine now though. You would already know if you had the same problem I did. Great job!

[zeroaffinity]

Update: mounted wheels

An update of my original post in this thread. Check it out!

GS 850G