It's been pretty hot here and we were very busy on our new
Project Gallery, but I did manage to make a few changes over the last couple of weeks.
The most obvious problem when driving my 912 now was that its tires were very old and cracked. They were so hard, that I'm not sure they were made of rubber anymore. I think they were more like
biscuits.
I would lock them up driving into my driveway even. There was simply no traction.
I ordered five Good Year Eagle GT tires. I ordered the 5th for a spare. The tires were 195/60/15s, about the biggest you want to run on stock wheels from my understanding. I did a bit of research and read that these tires offer good performance for the price and I liked the tread pattern versus the other brands such as Michelin or Yokohama.
I also reached a point in the project where I would take a turn -- and
I know some people won't like this. I looked at 911s and 912s for months to decide how I'd want mine to look, and something about the Fuchs wasn't doing it for me. Maybe it's because they're common, or maybe I just don't think they "fit" on the car, especially with this color. I am not a big fan of chrome/polish, so I couldn't do the hubcap. I took a slightly different direction.
I bought 5 steel wheels. I had no spare before, so I figured I may as well have a matching one. These are actually spares from the later 911s, so usually they're in pretty good shape. They're also cheap - the cost of these wheels plus tires is about what my Fuchs will sell for, so I'll basically trade my Fuchs without tires for steel wheels with brand new tires and gain a spare. They are quite a bit heavier (6.5 lbs per corner!), but since I intend to make this car a cruiser, I don't mind the extra rolling mass for now.
Most of them looked decent, but had OEM stickers on them:
I removed the sticker with Brake cleaner first, and cleaned and degreased all the wheels.
The roughest wheel had some surface rust:
The stack of the tiny wheels next to Cayenne TT tires (:lol
:
After brake parts cleaner and wire brushing...
Here's the paint I opted to use. It's the Rustoleum "Hammered Finish" silver. This is the same durable paint I used on my
homemade gaming seat.
I love this paint because of the finish it leaves, but it's also very strong for "cheap" spray paint.
It started raining minutes after my first ultra-light coat was applied to each wheel, so I had to wait 2-days to apply more paint.
Picking up where I left off, the final coats turned out exactly how I wanted them. I applied 2 very thin coats and 2 heavier coats.
The biggest problem was that they're now -too- clean and shiny, and the rest of the car isn't. As I am putting on some miles they are getting brake dust and road grime, completing the look I was going for.
Most recent pictures with the steelies, now with steel blackish lugnuts instead of chrome/aluminum caps. I still need to paint or clean up the centers though, which I'll do soon when I work on the brakes:
The car's running awesome. It seemed pretty fast on the way to work today with nice cool weather. Starts right up and idles fine, and now with these tires I've really been chucking it around some corners!