kerry_129

Thank you. I've never been much of a polish/chrome/bling guy, but when I painted my Viffer in Honda 'Athlete Gray' (w/ white pearl for a nice 'flip'), it needed some contrast & the polish worked really well to compliment the dark color. Fast-forward 4 years & 1 garage fire in late '06.... I finally managed to begin refurbishing it a few months ago after slowly collecting ebay bodywork/Franken-components (and stripping/p-coating/rebuilding the 'destroyed' R/T forks off my old RC51 track-bike which was totaled in the fire :beer: ). Paintjob in the same color is complete, as are the wheels now - should be back on the road finally this spring! :cool: I had the wheels polished before, but the maintenance to keep them decent looking was a pain in the butt (since it's no garage queen, racking up 45k miles in 4 years on the road) - so the powdercoat was a logical choice to provide a VERY durable finish w/ easy cleaning & no re-polishing required. I would highly, highly recommend it as the finish of choice for wheels regardless of color - or anything other metal bits that can be thrown in the oven (pegs, swingarms, triples, etc....).

Good stuff - looks familiar! Here is my latest effort in my drawn-out resurrection & Franken-Viffering of my poor old 5th-gen which was half melted in a garage fire 2 years ago. Stripped the OEM finish using Permatex gasket remover (similar, but even more agressive than the 'aircraft remover' I've used before), bead-blasted to remove residue, and used a grease-less grinding kit from Caswell Plating for the initial smoothing. Then did a bit of hand water-sanding w/ 800, followed by buffing w/ brown tripoli & then white rouge. Then powder-coated with Eastwood 'smoke chrome' on the spokes/centers, & super-gloss clear all over. Came out nicely, and I really like the slightly muted satin effect the clear gave the polished portion.