I have seen a set of the factory 996 BBS Sport Design wheels that have some corrosion and peeling on the lips. There were some BBS VW wheels that had this same issue with the clear peeling and corrosion...

Question: Are the 18" 996 Sport Design wheels a true 2 piece wheel? These are the ones i am talking about...

http://www.wheelenhancement.com/inde...elDetail&id=50

Wondering if they faces can be removed and the lips refinished?

 

If you plan to take it to a place like Wheels America to be refinished, they will be able to it despite the design of the wheel (1 piece or 2).

 

The wheels are 2 piece. Remove all the bolts, warm the outer rim with a couple of 1000 w hair dryers and they will separate. The lips are painted silver/chrome and clear-coated. Mine are doing the same thing and I will refinish them over the winter. I have seen these from time to time on the forums for $800-$1500 with tires. I would be interested in finding out what they would charge to refinish the wheels.

James Greer

 

A quality wheel like a BBS really should not have a clear coat peeling problem. What are you using to clean the wheels?

 

mk4 jetta's w/ wolfsburg edition wheels(BBS RX2) were notorious for this... I had a set on a corrado i had... if you are a DIY person, take them apart and use aircraft stripper to remove the clear and then you can reclear them yourself.

 

I will go look at them. I have done a few sets of the VW BBS wheels, just wanted to know if in fact they of the same 2 piece design. Should be easy to do as long as I can get the bolts out...

 

I have a set of these wheels and they are corroding pretty bad so took them to a wheel refurb place who said it will cost £65 per wheel but they will not take the bolts out so i would have to remove all the bolts and then they will refurb the wheels.

hmmmmm sounds easy enough right.....wrong......they are titanium bolts and the wheel is alloy.....a recipe for disaster!

I got the bolts out of the rear wheels but with the front wheels....out of three bolts i tried to remove....two of them snapped.......gave no warning.....no stretch....just snap!
and i was being crazy careful....loosen a bit....tighten a bit....back and forth to make sure the bolt wasn't pulling the thread out of the wheel.

Now one or two bolts is not a huge problem.......put in new inserts and rethread.........but it looks like the majority of the bolts in the front wheels will snap......which means it will cost a lot more to repair them than to just buy new wheels.

Either that or you get them painted as they are in which case they will also paint over all the bolts.......i have seen this done and it looks terrible....makes the wheels look like cheap copies!

So as for me.....I willl be selling my wheels and buying some new wheels.....now to decide which wheels to go for???

 

From what i understand the bolts are loctited in, so you have to heat up the wheel fist in order to remove the bolts. If i can get the wheels cheap, i may try to repair them.

 

From what I understand, you should also replace the bolts anytime you disassemble a 2 or 3-pc wheel. The torque applied to the bolt is intended to stretch it a little to create a tight assembly. That also means they should not be reused.

 

Yeah that may be so about the bolts. I was told they are titanium, so not sure they stretch much. Will call BBS and see what that say about that if I decide to try and mess with these wheels. Want to look at them first.

 

I have BBS Sport Classic II's, they are a real 2 piece, I had them taken apart and the centers powder coated black.

 

Well i scored a set of these Sport Design wheels, so will have the tires removed and see if I can get them apart. Will heat the wheels before trying to pull the bolts to hopefully soften the loctite and expand the aluminum a bit. Got the wheels cheap enough, so if it does not work out, oh well.

Question: Impact wrench or hand tools only? On 3 piece everyone uses impacts...what about these 2 piece wheels? 32 ft lbs is the max tq on them, but they are loctited in???