Jamesbbh

Hello all, Just figured it was about time to post pics of the work in progress.

day I got itHeadlight timethey work!

Jamesbbh

Wheels came in!
SSanding beginsLowered~eibach's

Jamesbbh

Headlights, clear corners.

mid-painting process


Finally done!!!! note to others, if you are thinking about painting/fixing curb rash on your own wheels.........
dont.
It's not that difficult, its just very time consuming.

Kevwood

Looking good and I can certainly appreciate your attention to detail and to do things right. Looking forward to seeing those wheels on the car.

Jamesbbh

Thanks a lot kev! I'm a mechanic at heart, I can sit in the garage working on a vehicle for hours on end and never get tired of it. I have a 97 wrangler that I have almost replaced every part on, and the only reason I bought it was to satisfy my need to work on things without becoming homeless in the process haha.

Kevwood

I know the feeling. When I was back in Canada I was working on my car all the time, tinkering here, custom fabing something there, I loved it. In fact, when I went back to Canada for a quick holiday last May I hauled my car out of storage and worked on it at a friends house for a few days...

So, after almost 5 years of doing nothing I'm getting pretty pumper about getting all my parts and working on the CLK now, that's the only reason I bought it.

BTW, it looks like the paint laid out nice and flat after it dried on the wheels. Sign of good prep work.

BadDebt

So did you not have Xenons before?

dynomite05

The wheels came out great. What kind of wheels are they?

Jamesbbh

Thanks a lot guys! They are The Linea Corses from Cannonball55's car on here. Kev, yes, there were a few days of sanding-cleaning-resanding-priming-sanding-cleaning-repriming-sanding. in there to finally level everything out. Nope, they car had Halogen Headlamps, one of them was broken off inside the housing and a tab was broken so I said why not go ahead and get the projectors.
Wheels
19x8.5 F
19x9.5 R

dynomite05

They looked great on his car. I was thinking about his front bumper, but ended up passing on it.

Jamesbbh

Yea, I'm just waiting on some akebono pads and I'll be throwing these on. What did you do for your "city" lights and fogs? I can't stand that yellowish city light.

dynomite05

I bought my city lights from eBay seller 'polyled'. The fogs are a 6000k HID kit from hidextra. I believe sponsor AZN is selling some city lights that work. Klinh installed them.

Jamesbbh

Sweeeeeet. I just PM'd him about some LED city-sidemarker-license plate lights that go well with the factory HID.

M-bENZ

car looks clean w the projector and how did you fixed the curb rash on your rims ? and looks like we have the same exterior colors i think.

Andy

kostas86

Nice job on the car and especially the wheels! Those wheels will look good on the car.

Jamesbbh

There was one little ding on one of the front wheels, for that I used a body repair "anvil?" and a body hammer and straightened it out because the curve on the anvil was about the same as the lip of the wheel. There were two other wheels where the scrapes couldn't be sanded out so I got everything to a level surface and filled them in with bondo, let it dry, then used a small wood block wrapped in sand paper to sand evenly down to where the bondo was only in the scrapes that were below the normal surface of the lip. Same principle as fixing a hole in drywall, just on a rim with bondo and not spackling. Then primered everything and started with that whole process. Thanks on the projectors! I love the light output vs. the halogen.

Jamesbbh

Thanks man! Yea as soon as my f/r akebono pads come in I'll throw these on and change out the pads while I'm at it, they have been squeeking a little. Also, the factory metallic pads put off an ubsurd amount of dust, that alone is reason enough to change them to ceramic. I'm kinda looking into drilled/slotted rotors, anyone have experience with the R1 rotors?

dynomite05

I see you are a big DIY'er. More props to you. It must feel great looking at the fruits of your labor. I used the R1 rotors for a while and they were great. No complaints.

Kevwood

My hat off to you for all the work on those wheels! I've prep'd and painted wheels before but never re-shaped and repaired curb rash. Awesome effort.

badblackbenz550

signed up.

Jamesbbh

Thanks a lot. Yea I just like having the personal satisfaction of doing things myself, not to mention it saves $. In a couple months I think I'll be getting a set of those R1's.

Jamesbbh

Thanks kev. It's really not bad as long as you don't have to recreate a perfect angle/curve or anything like that. I started the whole wheel painting thing telling myself "it doesnt matter how long it takes" just so I wouldn't rush and not allow adequate drying times/not sand everything properly etc. I will say sanding in between all of those spokes was a P.I.T.A. I worked on them averaged out about an hr a night for about 2 weeks, most of that was letting stuff dry for 2 days per coat.

Jamesbbh

well they came in the mail on Nov. 26 and finished them night before last so however long that is lol.

lowpost

Nice job

ahmadk

lookin clean