Maxilite Fuchs Quality

[wkrtsm]

My '68 had 2 original 6x15 Fuchs on one side and 2 replicas on the other side, indicating the previous owner maybe had the ugly painted steel wheels and then upgraded with anything he could find. Fortunately, the spare wheel in the trunk is an original Fuchs, so I am now having the 3 Fuchs fully polished, and purchased a Maxilite 6x15 fully polished to act as the fourth better looking wheels for the car. One of the replicas will serve as the spare, and the other will just go into storage.

Years ago, I painted over the black paint on my Fuchs (and replicas) using silver metal spray, since I do not like the black paint and aluminum petal look. As the years go by, for black-painted Fuchs, the black paint gets weather-beaten, loses its gloss, and tends to start looking grey and dirty, ultimately requiring repainting. So I took the NASA approach to "engineer around the problem" (of going to the moon) by admiring the fully polished look. In this fashion, paint issues are gone.

Regarding the aluminum surface of a Fuchs, they are anodized, so when polishing Fuchs by yourself, you first have to sand off the anodizing with 180, then follow with 300, then wet sand with 600, 1200, 1500, and then 3000 grit, followed by buffing -- for about 10-20 hours PER WHEEL!). When I first took a Fuchs to the plating shop last summer, the owner used an electrometer to measure resistance (in Ohms) and confirmed they were anodized. The nice thing about a plating shop is that they can remove the anodizing and all paint, grit, road tar, etc by dunking the wheel for several minutes in the same acid that's in paint stripper - I believe it's sulphuric. Apparently, a couple minutes removes all the anodization and everything on the surface. Once anodization has been removed from the Fuchs, you can't simply use a buffing wheel alone to acquire a mirror shine, sanding is required. So the shop will use their wheel polishing machine to first sand, then buff to a mirror shine.

(i didn't mention this above, but the same plating shop powder coated all my engine sheet metal, valve covers, and oil filler housing last summer, and chromed the generator pulley halves, throttle linkage, distributor band and bolt, generator strap and bolt, oil filler cap, and nickel plated the engine mount cross-member bolts, and generator nut. nickel is stronger than chrome, so be sure to get generator nut nickel plated).

Below are pictures of the new Maxilite fully polished 6x15 that arrived today. I took it into the plating shop to get their opinion on whether they needed to do some work on it, and the owner said no, the Fuchs will look very similar, and probably a little smoother, but for all practical purposes he said you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the Fuchs and the Maxilite. (again, FYI, the Maxilite looks exactly like the naked Fuchs after stripping whereas the two replicas I have do not have a deep 6 look). The plating shop owner also said the aluminum used in the Maxilite appears to be high quality, without the presence of magnesium or other alloys used for cutting costs.













Last, I always add an incentivizing engine pic to swing potential 912 buyers sitting on the fence to buy, buy, buy! (the distributor is an MSD VW billet which drops right into the block of a 912 engine, and with a MSD blaster coil, MSD 6AL ignition, Weber 40IDFs, velocity stacks, Tricom 105 cam, big piston kit, headers, MOCAL external oil cooler and thermostat, MOTUL ester core racing oil, it's not your regular 912 engine!)