So I've had a set of Fikse FM10's on my RX7 for some time. The wheels previous owner didn't take the best care of the wheels and the inner barrels were pretty pitted, and the centers and lips showed signs of neglect. So instead of selling the wheels as is and buying new ones I decided to rebuild them myself.
I didn't take many pictures of the breakdown, but here is one. Once you remove all the bolts cut a slice with a razor blade all around the wheel through the silicone sealant, and then carefully pry the barrel and lip apart with a large screw driver. In the picture you can see how nasty the inner barrels were. The sealant on the floor was between the barrel and lip, I stripped most of it off with the razor blade.
Before pic of the centers. They look to be in better condition in the picture here then they really were.
After broke them down I took the parts to a local sandblasting shop. For $80 I got all the parts blasted....but they weren't ready for paint yet. In this pic you can see the lip was pretty rough after the sand blast. I sanded the lips down with 150 then 220, and then 350 grit. I also did some sanding on the barrels.
Lip before sanding.
Lip after sanding.
It was a lot of sanding!
Ha, it really wasn't that bad.
I did some reading about painting 3 piece wheels, and how you really shouldn't have paint on the wheel mating surfaces. I decided to have the wheels painted in stages.
First I had the lips and centers painted, with the mating surfaces of the parts masked off. Needless to say I took a few trips to the paint shop. You can't see in the pic, but the mating surface on the back of the centers is not painted.
Lips painted gloss black.
Nice parts chillin in my mud room.
I wanted the bolts nice clean so I let them soak in CLR, and scrubbed all 80 of them with a brush! Came out nice.
Next I had to assemble the wheels. Fikse wheel bolts need to be torqued to 14ft-lbs. I didn't have a torque wrench that went that low accurately, so I bought a Snap-On 0-250 in-lbs torque wrench.
Torqued all the wheels in a star pattern, marking each bolt as I went to not miss any.
After the wheels are assembled, they all have to be sealed. Don't apply sealant to the parts before assembly, you only do it afterwards. I went with GE supreme silicone. It is good for aluminum parts, and worked great for me. I also went with a clear sealant so I would be able to see any bubbles in the joint.
To apply the silicone first tape off around the joint. The tape will make your sealant job come out much cleaner.
Then apply a thin bead around the entire wheel. You don't need to much, but enough to completely cover the seam. Run a wet finger over the sealant and smooth it around the whole joint. Make sure there are NO bubbles in the sealant.
Before the sealant cures, remove the tape. Now you will have a real nice seam.
Ready for final paint!
Not much more to say now. I had the paint finished up. Matte black on the centers, center caps, and barrels.
Guess a finished pic of the wheels on the car would be nice.
