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BBS LM - no machines, DIY refinish

spiker369

on air, don't care
Decided to wait until the final product before making a thread but here it goes!

At EuroTripper 3 in February 2015 I picked up a set of BBS LM’s from my buddy Bryan (Carbon13GTI). He had plans to do a full polish on the wheels but sold them to me before he was able to so I figured I’d make that my project for the next year. My over all goal was to have the wheels done by the time EuroTripper 4 was rolling around so I managed to finish a few months early! I originally wrote this up in November 2015 but didn't want to post anything online until EuroTripper 4 passed this past weekend.

Here are photos when the wheels were on his GTI. You can see some damage to the face of the wheel in the close up shot.





Did everything by hand, I don’t have any specialty tools and don’t have the funds to ship the wheels out to be professionally refinished so quite a few packs of sandpaper, and many hours, the wheels are finished. These are the first set of wheels I’ve refinished, and my first set of multi piece wheels.

Specs are 17x8/9 ET20 (reverse mounted faces) 5x114.3 with wobble bolts.

The day I got the wheels home I started splitting them apart. Within 20 days I had the first face polished up, however once I stood back and took pictures of it, I was able to tell there were still some very deep scratch marks from sanding so I had to go back and resand that one. I started from 220 and went up to 2000.











The wheels have had at least two previous owners from my knowledge so they aren’t perfect to start with. Sanding down through the pitted texture of the BBS original grey and the machined markings on the lips look some time. There were also some dings on the faces from them being bolted to cars which I had to file down and then smooth out.









Cleaned up all the bolts since I have to reuse them. Wire brush to remove the old locktite and diet coke bath to break down any other gunk. I also polished up the center caps to get a consistent shine across them.

Doing the sanding by hand made getting into the windows a little challenging so I opted to paint the insides black. I haven’t seen this done with polished faces on LM’s so I thought I’d give it a shot. I did this with black plastidip, and since having them finished and having to go back and re-polish the faces, I might eventually use actual wheel paint or find someone to power them.





Pre camber fitment lol



Here are some shots when I was contemplating the rear fitment. More poke is with the faces reverse mounted. Ultimately I went with that option because I wanted the deeper lip, and sanding down the top of the lip was much easier than sanding the top edge of the face.





The only thing left to do now is buy valve stem caps because one was missing when I bought the wheels. Over all though I am extremely happy with how this project turned out!

Now for the finished photos.. :laugh: For polish I only used what was readily available at walmart—Mother's Polish. I would like to invest in some better metal polishes, heard good things about Adams, but I would love to get recommendations here!

20160106_9655_BBSLM by Kyle Anderson, on Flickr

20160106_9657_BBSLM by Kyle Anderson, on Flickr

20160106_9664_BBSLM by Kyle Anderson, on Flickr

20160106_9665_BBSLM by Kyle Anderson, on Flickr

And here are two shots from EuroTripper 4, shots from photographer Donato Dell'Api, follow him on instagram @donatodellapi; http://donatodellapi.com





Any comments or feedback is welcomed! I had a great time doing this project.
 

StayStetti

Banned
Very nice man. I just finished a set a few months back too.



and have a set of 17x9's coming in from japan :thumbsup: love these wheels
 

spiker369

on air, don't care
What a difference...

Nice work! Those look great.

:clap: great job man.

Looks great with the black!

Thank you all! :D


Very nice man. I just finished a set a few months back too.

and have a set of 17x9's coming in from japan :thumbsup: love these wheels

I actually watched your thread a bit during that. Any chance you would have a spare valve stem cap? ;)
 

spiker369

on air, don't care
They look great. I love the black inside the spokes, they probably will be hard to clean with the plastidip though

I ran a set of wheels that were fully dipped and I also did a full dip on my fiancé's beetle a while back and I am fully aware how hard it is to keep clean, especially with brake dust. I did mention I would possibly change it in the future, but for right now I'm happy with it. :p
 

callmegti

Go Kart Champion
man that is sexy..... my wheel's faces are currently plastidipped. I use diablo wheel gel from chemical guys and it cleans up pretty nice for plastidipped wheels.
 

sterkrazzy

Autocross Champion
Damn, they came out really good. I tried to do this with some work equips years ago. I pretty much quit after the first wheel lol
 
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