Advice on Fuchs wheel refinish - powder coat?

[jdbunda]

A while back I picked up a set of 16" Fuchs 7s and 8s that were in terrible condition - old flaking chrome, corrosion on the inside barrels, and so on. I just took them to a local strip/powder coat place and had them media blast all the old chrome off and clean them up. I went and took a look today, and I am on the fence about what direction to go. I have read every thread on this site about refinishing Fuchs from polishing, powder coating, painting, anodizing, sending to Harvey or Al Reed. I struggle with the idea of spending $300+ per wheel plus shipping for wheels of such, er, questionable pedigree, so I have been hoping to find a DIY or low buck solution to get them usable again.

My original hope was to get the chrome off, polish the lips and paint the centers black. I don't have pictures, but after seeing them with all the chrome stripped, I am concerned that polishing might not work all that well, there is some pitting from corrosion that took place under the old peeling chrome. Seems like it would take a lot of polishing to look good, maybe take off too much metal in the process?

My next thought was to powder coat them silver - I could paint the centers back over the powder coat if desired. The shop that did the stripping will powder coat them for $300 the set. They even have a frosted silver that would do a great RSR look, and would also mask the imperfections a little better. There is a thread about this, supposedly the rougher powder coat finish doesn't catch brake dust that badly. But it is a more purposeful look that I'm not sure my bone stock Iris Blue Targa is up to carrying

Anyway, here is my question - I have read in various places on this site that it is important to mask off the wheel bolt openings, as well as the mating surfaces on the backs of the wheels. I get the reasoning, but is this really necessary? The guy at this powder coating shop claims to have done thousands of wheels, and never heard anything like this. They have plugs for the center holes, but did not have a solution for masking the wheel bolt holes. The guy claims that the powder coating is thin enough not to be an issue, but I have seen enough warnings about this when painting that I honestly don't know what to think. Can anyone shed some light on this? Is it truly necessary to mask these? If so, is there some easy trick to keeping the powder coating out of the wheel bolt holes?

[Josh D]

I've finished a total of 6 Fuchs and I've never masked off the lug countersinks. After taking the wheels off a couple times, the lug nuts wear it off anyway. Maybe someone will chime in with a horror story of why this is bad and that I'm an idiot, but I haven't had any problem.

[douglas bray]

When I painted mine and mounted them for the first time I torqued down the nuts, backed them off, and out popped the paint that had cracked loose. It was a perfect little doughnut looking paint circle that left behind a nice clean fresh metal mating surface ready to go.

I did my lip with rattle can Silber sold by our host. Perfect RSR finish.

http://www.pelicanparts.com/cgi-bin/ksearch/PEL_search_2014.cgi?command=show_part_page&please_wait=N&SUPERCAT_FLAG=Y&make=POR&model=5876&section=MISCLL&page=18&bookmark=74&part_number=IZ-970330

[Arne2]

I worked in tires and wheels for many years. Paint in the lug seats isn't too bad, but powder coat on the lug seat can cause the lug nuts to loosen over time, depending on how thick a coating is applied.I've only seen it happen a few times, but why chance it? If your powdercoater can't/won't keep it out of the lug seats (the one I talked to locally said that would be no problem at all), I'd remove it myself after I got them back.