Refurbishing three piece wheels

Jeo

New Member
Hi all,

Bought myself a set of well used Simmons B45's a while back on the cheap with the intention of repairing/cleaning them and putting on my Mirage. Only took almost 18 months to actually get around to it, but we got there in the end.

I didn't document every step, but managed to get photos of most of them and thought I'd share in case anyone else had considered doing the same. All told it was relatively easy, although time consuming, but still kinda fun. The plan with this car was always to learn to do new things with it and I'm glad I had a go. All told the wheels only cost me a couple of hundred bucks and a bunch of time, so are definitely a good way to go if you're looking for the budget option and have the time to spare.


First up we need to separate the wheels. These Simmons were bolted together using hex head bolts and some weird proprietary nut on the back.
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I could buy a special socket to match the nut, but nuts to that (wow I'm funny). I was alwaying going to use regular hex nuts when putting them back together, so vice grips it was to undo them.

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Once the bolts were removed the centre could be popped out with a mallet.

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Then you'll need to cut the sealant with a knife.

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And the rim outers should separate. Now comes the fun part of cleaning - start with a knife/scraper to get rid of as much of the sealant as you can, then move to sandpaper to get it clean. Then give the mating surfaces a little scuff to clean and ensure a good seal when they go back together.

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Now to clean the rest of the wheel. You can spend forever on these, polishing to an almost mirror finish if you had the time; I just got it toa point where I was happy with it from arms length. They're not going on a show car so looking ok from across the road is fine by me.

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Wash, sand, polish, etc. I did this over a few days. Started by getting all of the grime off with a brush and soapy water. Next came various grades of sand paper to get out any scratches. Finally I moved to a polishing/buffing wheel on the bench grinder for the outers, and a can of spray for the centres.

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A couple of coats of paint for the centres.

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Then reassembled with new nuts, bolts, and thread locker. Bolts could be bought from a wheel company for a horrendous amount of money, or just go to a fastener store and buy high tensile nuts and bolts. I went with 12.9 zinc plated, eventually torqued to 26Nm over three passes in a star pattern (as in torqued everything to 20, then 23, the 26 or something to that effect). Shakeproof washers or spring washers won't bite on 12.9 rated nuts so don't bother, just use loctite. 3 passes on 20 bolts on 4 wheels - set yourself up in a comfortable position. Luckily I was a week away from replacing the carpet in my lounge room and didn't care about the floor, so my in front of the tv was pretty great for me. Much better than the cold garage in a Canberra winter...

After they're together, run a bead of sealant around the inside of the join. Originally I trusted the internet where a forum told me that regular bathroom grade silicone would do - that was crap - 3/4 of them leaked as soon as we put the tyres on. I then spoke to a tyre shops who kindly sold me a jar of "wheel sealant". Literally it was a jam jar, no idea what it was but it stunk real bad and worked real well. Had to clean off all of the old sealant again, but 0/4 leaks the second time around.

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And there we have it. All up even if you had to buy all the consumables, you'll probably still get out of it for <$100 after buying the wheels.

Used set of dirty wheels missing a few bolts - real cheap
80x high tensile nuts and bolts - Can't entirely remember but I was surprised at how cheap this was. I want to say $35, but it was definitely less than $50
Can of spray - ~$8?
Various grades of sandpaper - ~$10?
Loctite - ~$10?
Polishing compound - ~$10?

Tools needed
Torque wrench
Ratchet and sockets
Knife/scraper
Polishing/buffing wheel was pretty great, but I guess you could do it by hand if you really wanted to

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