Mirrored topic from wheel/tire forum since some of you may never venture over in there.

First of all I want to post this since NOBODY here or anywhere else on the net could seem to help me out with this.

This topic is for you guys that have nice 3-piece wheels, but need to take them apart to polsh the lip, change bolts, refinish the face/spokes of the wheel, etc.

I must say this though:

DO NOT DISSASSEMBLE 3 PIECE WHEELS IF YOU ARE NOT READY FOR A MAJOR PAIN IN THE ***!!!

I have a set of nice Black Racing 3-piece wheels. The spokes were blue on them, so I wanted to repaint them. I at first just wanted to tape the lips of the wheels off and shoot the spokes with a matte black finish myself.

Then my friend kindly pointed out:

"Hey these are 3 piece! Just take them apart and shoot them so we don't have to tape them up!"

Huge mistake.

Luckily for me we only pulled the 32 bolts out per wheel, and only pulled/pryed the lip off of only one wheel. I also polished each and every one of the 128 bolts total because they had dulled over the years.

After prying the lip of the wheel off I realized it would need to be resealed, which sounds easy, but for some reason in Atlanta even rim repair shops would not touch the idea.

One shop pointed me in the direction of a truck supply company that sold high pressure, high temp polyurethane based sealant that they used to reseal old school wire wheels with years ago.

Basically after prepping the lip and wheel face I applied the sealant with a caulking gun, and hand torqued each and every 32 bolt to 22ft-lbs. of torque with a torque wrench on a criss cross pattern - imagine criss cross tightening 32 bolts much like you do the 4 or 5 lug nuts on your wheels, and doing it two-three times to make sure you got them all.

After letting them cure for three days I mounted the tire, and the damn thing laked from one tiny spot where the lip meets the wheel face.

So I took them back apart and tried again.

This time I tried a better way of prepping the surfaces.

I used a wire wheel on a drill to remove any/all sealant residues, 320 grit sand paper and water, and then I used HONDABOND to actually seal the wheel. I applied a pretty fat bead of it and again retorqued the 32 bolts to 22ft-lbs. and let it cure for 24 hours...

GREAT SUCCESS!!!

I would have taken pics of the pocedures, but I did this at work while juggling cars, phones, an customers, plus I was super pissed when the first time didn't seal up.

Basically what I mean from this long-winded post is that it can be done, but unless you absolutely MUST tear 3 piece wheels apart, don't. I'm lucky in that I work at a shop and coould mount and dismount the tires for free each time if the wheel(s) hadn't sealed up, but if you're a regular Joe you might want to just tape the wheels up to paint them.

Oh and a few pics to show the difference:

Before:



After:



I jumped for joy when the wheels held air:



If anyone needs some assistance in resealing 3-piece wheels feel free to ask. I'm no "expert" but I feel now that I know a lot more than I did before having successfully pulled this off myself.

BTW:

The one wheel shop in ATL that said they could do it wanted $150.00 per wheel!!! to reseal them.

 

whats the product you used to reseal?

any pics of the process?

 

good to hear you are still alive miss your informative posts

 

damb...HONDABOND....that thing is magic

 

hondabond cures cancer, true story.

the wheels look great.

 

Sweet wagon.

 

I liked the wheels when they were blue!

 

Resealing multi peice wheels isn't that hard it's just a pain if you have to keep going to a shop to have them take the tires on and off. Too late now, but there's lots of info on vwvortex about this stuff.

 

I heard chuck norris invented hondabond to put people back together when he roundhouse kicked off their limbs.

 

Awesome colour match

 

I use Hondabond to seal just about anything, and not just on Hondas either. Good ****!

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by B18C5-EH2 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">
BTW:

The one wheel shop in ATL that said they could do it wanted $150.00 per wheel!!! to reseal them.

</TD></TR></TABLE>

holy ****. what shop was that?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by sammysnakes &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

holy ****. what shop was that?</TD></TR></TABLE>

It's called Elite Auto off of Buford Highway in Chamblee - right on the outskirts of Atlanta.

Yeah just to be clear I ended up using Hondabond to reseal the wheel. You can find Hondabond at any Honda/Acura dealership. It is mainly usd as a gasket maker/sealer for areas such as corners of valvecover gaskets, flat areas on oil pan gaskets, the sole sealer of thermo necks, around oil pumps, etc. etc.

I honestly did not thinjk it would seal AIR at pressures as high as tires run at, but after driving on them HARD it's still got the same psi as it did when I aired it up the other day.

Sorry for not doing one of my typical "how-to" topics with pics, etc. Again I was really stressed about the whole process, and due to time constraints I did not have the option of taking pics.

 

Very very nice. Hondabond for the win.

 

awesome

 

those looks good! i like your wagovannn!

 

nice write up tom, i'm loving the wagon!!!

 

looks good..nice job

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by B18C5-EH2 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

imagine criss cross tightening 32 bolts much like you do the 4 or 5 lug nuts on your wheels, and doing it two-three times to make sure you got them all.

</TD></TR></TABLE>

no, imagine tightening hundreds of bolts in that pattern, which require torque in the thousands of lbs (using a hydraulic torque wrench that will snap off your fingers if you don't set it up/operate it correctly).





lol its actually really simple if you know the formula for the amount of bolts you have.

you can number them in a sequence using a marker or soap stone, and then just follow the numbers.

of course i don't know that formula off the top of my head, but it really does make it easy!

next time number them, this is probably why you had the intial leaks. getting that pattern correct is definately the most critical part of that entire job...

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by BIGBLOCKEK &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">next time number them, this is probably why you had the intial leaks. getting that pattern correct is definately the most critical part of that entire job... </TD></TR></TABLE>

Ummm no I didn't have the leak the first time because of my assembly, IT WAS DUE TO THE SHITTY SEALANT RECOMMENDED BY A LOCAL WHEEL SHOP!!!

I reassembled the wheel in the exact same manner as I did the first time, torque steps and all, and the only difference was the sealant used, which was good old Hondabond.

 

Looks much better afterwards Tom.

Sounds like it was a PITA, but well worth it.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by B18C5-EH2 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

Ummm no I didn't have the leak the first time because of my assembly, IT WAS DUE TO THE SHITTY SEALANT RECOMMENDED BY A LOCAL WHEEL SHOP!!!

I reassembled the wheel in the exact same manner as I did the first time, torque steps and all, and the only difference was the sealant used, which was good old Hondabond.</TD></TR></TABLE>

ummm no need to shout.

in your original post, you did not specify your means of keeping track of the bolt order.

naturally one could assume that you could have possibly just eyeballed it, which definitely could have caused a leak like i mentioned.

im glad you found out what works, and got it done.

i know how satisfying it can be to accomplish a real pita like that, with minimal/no info available.

good job