kkritsilas
Well-Known Member
I had promised this a long, long time ago, but finally got to it. I have just abrasive blasted one of my 5 on 5 wheels, and I have some pictures.
This came out of a few missteps, and some research. My first stab at this was to try to remove the factory wheel paint using aircraft stripper. After using up a lot of aircraft stripper, and getting pretty much nowhere, I started looking at either sanding the wheel, or abrasive blasting it. Sanding had two drawbacks: 1 Labour intensive; and 2: I didn't want to round off any sharp edges, of which there are many on a 5 on 5. Research on Eastwood's site, and going back and forth with Eastwood's technical people, pointed towards crushed soda glass blasting. However, as much as I would like to get the Eastwood spot abrasive/soda blaster kit, the cost of shipping and now, exchange, made this a pretty expensive proposition just to do an experiment. I found some cheaper equipment locally. Most likely, now that I know this works, I will be buying the Eastwood kit, soon.
The 5 on 5 looked like this before I started:
A close up of the two spokes I tried the aircraft stripper on:
It looked like this, post blasting:
This came out of a few missteps, and some research. My first stab at this was to try to remove the factory wheel paint using aircraft stripper. After using up a lot of aircraft stripper, and getting pretty much nowhere, I started looking at either sanding the wheel, or abrasive blasting it. Sanding had two drawbacks: 1 Labour intensive; and 2: I didn't want to round off any sharp edges, of which there are many on a 5 on 5. Research on Eastwood's site, and going back and forth with Eastwood's technical people, pointed towards crushed soda glass blasting. However, as much as I would like to get the Eastwood spot abrasive/soda blaster kit, the cost of shipping and now, exchange, made this a pretty expensive proposition just to do an experiment. I found some cheaper equipment locally. Most likely, now that I know this works, I will be buying the Eastwood kit, soon.
The 5 on 5 looked like this before I started:
A close up of the two spokes I tried the aircraft stripper on:
It looked like this, post blasting:
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