Frosted fikse's? Anyone?

[david.avery]

Hey all

I have a set of FM10's going on the car. They were bought used, and have the "microscratch" surface. That's right, lots of little scratches on the centers. Only visible from 2'.

I love the frosted fuchs, has anyone done any alternate finishes on the FM10's? I don't want polished chromy bling, a way to make them more subtle would be cool. I would prefer not to paint them or dismount the tires I just mounted. It would be cool if I could just rough em up, or even apply some gun metal type finish and get a dull gray or the frosted look (like the walnut blasted RSR fuchs).

On the flip side, I do not want to make more of a maintenance nightmare for myself either, so if removing the present coating/finish (whatever it may be) is unwise, that's good enough for me!

[KTL]

Fikse offers anodizing as a finish. So maybe go that route?

I know there's alot of metal finishing places around my area, so there must be a pretty big market for it. Maybe look in the local yellow pages or do a search online to see what's in your area? I'm all for supporting the well known refinishers like Al Reed, Weidman, etc. But it's not rocket science. Somebody local to you has to be doing the same thing.

Only drawback to anodizing is you'll have to take the wheels apart.

[david.avery]

Yeah, I don't want to split the wheels. I was even thinking of the "scotch-brite" effect, like here:

Scotch Brite on polished fuchs results...

[KTL]

Scotchbrite solution would definitely work good. Less future maintenance too.

Are the Fikse's clearcoated? I can't remember. The clear will obviously make some more work for you. Especially on those mult-spoked FM10's. Should have bought FM5's............

If you're going to go thru the trouble of scuffing them up, just take them to a media blasting place. Would save you lots of time and elbow grease.

[jackb911]

Glass-bead blasting would give you the desired effect. The rims could be masked/duct taped off so they would stay shiny.

[gestalt1]

if you scotch bright or bead blast you might remove the anodize finish and the aluminum will oxidize. i think if you do either you could put a heavy coat of wax on to protect the wheel. the wax will also make it easier to clean them.