Megatron build

I have these coming Monday: https://amzn.com/B00O9H0QIG. I unpackaged the wheels yesterday and they definitely need paint. I could probably get away with just repainting the edge as the majority of the wheels' paint looks smooth and unblemished, though one of the wheels has a weird awash look to the paint. They're rather dirty though, so I'm going to give them a good cleaning prior to any decision. I know it will vary greatly by area, but does anyone have an idea of what professionally stripping and painting would cost? If I have to paint them myself it'll be after the end of the month.

If you have a powder coating facility nearby, you might consider trying it. Lasts much better than paint.

I'd love to powder coat them, but I don't want to spend the $500+ it sounds like I'd need to for a car that may be temporary. I've done quite of bit of rattle-canning in my day and with a bit of work I'm confident I can make these look as good as new. As there are no tires, my task is a lot easier so I started by removing all the valves and center caps and sanded down the spokes with 320 grit sandpaper. I didn't have any finer on hand other than 1200 grit, so I'll do a light final sanding with 1200 after degreasing. Two of the wheels had pretty decent paint but the other two looked a bit mottled and worn and I'm fairly certain they all have only a single coat of spray paint, so I'm going to take the time to do it right and make it last.

that looks pretty cool just like that

Haha. Perhaps, but it doesn't fit the style I'm going for with Megatron, which is basically: sleek, black and understated.

I finally got some time to work on my Mickey's wheels. I gave them all a moderate sanding, then cleaned/degreased them at the car wash.



When I was looking into repainting them initially, I came across a great DIY forum post that suggested JB Weld for bad curbing and minor dent repair so I gave that a try. I only remembered to take "before" pictures after I'd applied JB Weld to most of the dents which is a shame because the curbing on one of the wheels was BAD and required some serious build up. We'll see how it holds up. I'm hoping that tire installation doesn't shatter it off. Now I just need to clean all the JB Weld dust off and the oils from my skin (because I'm lazy and didn't use gloves for handling) and I'll prime them. Unfortunately, it's now too cold even in my garage to paint, so I'm crossing my fingers that I can finish my new subpanel and heater installation before it snows again. The traction on my stock front tires is horrible in the snow. I don't think those tires were intended for cold weather climates. They haven't quite hit the tread wear bars yet, but they're oddly scraped-looking like hardened rubber.

I also test fit the wheels with the 5mm spacers on the front end and they fit like a tailored glove, thanks to info I learned from Bryce's thread. Initially I was nervous with how tight it was until I put the stock wheel back on and saw very similar gaps.

Awe yeah! I've been waiting to paint my wheels until my garage was warm enough for proper drying. I had even gone so far as to purchase a garage heater to install with my EVSEs, but that's taking a lot longer than expected to install. The weather was considerably warmer this weekend, so I took my opportunity and sprayed them. Two coats of automotive primer:



Three coats of Rustoleum gloss black caliper paint. I figured it would be hardy enough to endure the rigors of wheel duty. Home Depot had a Rustoleum wheel paint as well, but the only suitable colors were graphite and flat black. Flat black might have been okay, but the caliper paint was a dollar more per can, so I figured it was a tougher product. For a rattle can job, I'm quite please with the result.

Looks good! Can't wait to see them on the car!!

Neither can I. It's like Christmas eve that lasts 7 days! I'm figuring out which tires to put on them as we speak. I want to make sure I have them installed as soon as the paint has fully cured.

Blargh, too much deliberation on what tires to use! I just ordered some Michelin Premier A/S tires from Costco as they seemed like the best all-around value for dry, wet AND snow/ice traction. I was really tempted to order some winter tires and just swap them onto my stock wheels in favor of a summer high-performance tire later this year, but I hate shuffling wheels. Depending on how I like the Premiers, I may employ this plan down the road as I'm planning on keeping the stock wheels for potential resale of the car. For now, I'm sure most any tire will irritate me less than the Ecopias.

Hello from another Black Spark EV owner in Utah! (I think that makes 2 of us?)

I just picked up my 2014 from California. I've been loving it so far. I also plan to black out the Chevy emblems and debadge the vehicle. Also considering LED headlight conversion, as the halogen bulbs feel so out of place for me on this car.

Any tips, tricks, or insights you might have for me?

EDIT: Here's my Spark EV:

Congratulations! They're great little cars. It's clear Chevy didn't spend much time on designing user interaction, but the powertrain is awesome. It's disappointing Chevy is ignoring the Utah EV market, considering the road presence of Nissan's Leaf. I have never seen another Spark EV here in the wild, despite seeing others for sale online, so I hope to see you sometime.

I don't recommend prying off the front inner gold bowtie to paint it. Just pull off the whole assembly and mask how you will. I snapped mine in half trying to heat it back into shape. Then again, I also sanded/chemically peel off the gold backing to try to paint the backside, for depth and natural paint protection. The gold has stained the plastic, so it's not worth the attempt.

I highly recommend a dark ceramic window tint which will save you energy during summer climate control. It looks like you already have a darker tint, so that's a plus. I can't really speak to LED conversion, but I like the idea. I also recommend investing in a Level 2 EVSE as I'm sure you've noticed how limited the range is and charging with the mobile one mine came with takes a really long time. Additionally, Level 2 charging consumes less energy overall. As you can see, I've sourced a set of lightweight wheels for true tire rotation. I hate the Bridgestone Ecopias. They're one of the worst tires I've ever experienced. Costco will receive my order on Tuesday, so I'm chomping at the bit! I forgot to paint the Mugen center caps, but I put them on this weekend and I think they'll do fine. If it ends up bugging me, it's easy enough to take them off and paint them.

Yesterday was incredibly disappointing. I chipped one of my wheels on the lip moving them out into the garage, and Costco chewed up edges mounting the tires, so the caliper paint is clearly not as tough as I had thought and because I chose a gloss black instead of flat, I can't really spot fix the chipping. I could have dealt with all that if I had been able to at least put them on Mickey. Alas, when I test fit the front wheels with my 5 mm spacers, I had not yet bored out the hub seats to 57.1 mm from the wheels' Honda friendly 56ish mm and retested the fit, which seats them about 2-3 mm further on to the wheel hub and makes the spokes interfere with the brake caliper. ]=

sequ,
What is a typical price to have the hub centers bored out?

If you don't mind me asking.

And when you use the new spacer thickness, will it have a means to have the wheel centered on a the hub or the spacer?

I very carefully and gradually bored them out myself using a rotary tool, test fitting them multiple times until they slid onto the hub tightly but smoothly and easily, so the hub seat centers the wheels naturally. I'm a little leery of using spacers larger than 5mm. I think a 1/4" or 7mm spacer could provide the clearance I need, but I'm worried about thread engagement and fender clearance. I saw an article recommending extended thread lug nuts for greater engagement with spacers, but they get a lot of flack in most forums. Granted, a lot of folks are talking 10-20mm spacers with ET lug nuts, at which point you'd just want new wheel studs. The article I referenced described the physics of wheel mounting, stating that it's the frictional clamping force that supports the weight of the vehicle and the studs are only there for the clamping, not for support. So in theory, as long as you appropriately torque the lug nuts and have proper thread engagement, which ET lug nuts would provide, there would be no problem using them. I'm toying around with ordering these, but I need to measure the thickness of my wheel from hub face to lug seat to ensure the ET part isn't long enough to interfere with proper seating:

http://a.co/1zUpGMo

Thoughts?

Then again, there are articles like this:

http://tires.about.com/od/understanding_wheels/a/hub-centric-vs-lug-centric-wheels.htm

Makes me wonder what the first article writer was smoking with the shearing physics, though it didn't speak to wheels being hub centric and solely focused on the lugs. As I've ground my wheels out to be hub centric, I'm not seeing any gotchas, but this is somewhat beyond my experience as I've never needed to use spacers.

He needs to take a closer look at the hubs on modern vehicles - the metal on those I've seen while changing wheels is no more than 1/16" thick, and would add very little mechanical resistance to shear forces.

'Hand machining the hub center hole' ??

Possible, but to verify, each bare wheel could be mounted to a rear hub and hand spun with a dial indicator on the OD of the rim to measure run out.

I bought a used TDI with big ass wheels and tires. It was never smooth. The previous owner had new balanced tires on it when I bought it.
I went to my local tire shop to have them balanced and get a free alignment check. All was well except they found that these wheels had a large hub center and I needed hub centric rings.
They had them in stock and that smoothed out the vibration perfectly.

Then perhaps it's a combination of friction and studs/hub support. Either way it makes me wonder about wheels I've had it the past and the noise/vibration level of the car they were mounted to.

NORTON said:

Possible, but to verify, each bare wheel could be mounted to a rear hub and hand spun with a dial indicator on the OD of the rim to measure run out.

Click to expand...

Er... I didn't do that. I guess I'll see once I sort out the caliper clearance and mount the wheels. I'm really starting to regret this whole adventure.

Has anyone tried pushing et45 wheels out with a 7 mm spacer? I don't really want to order parts to clear the calipers if fender clearance is going to be an issue.