One of the dry-rotted tires that came on my "barn-find" 914 finally gave out (at home -- pfwew !) and I decided it was time to go for some wider wheels. I was drifting ever closer to the 5-lug option when I came across some 4-lug 17x5s on a non-club website's classifieds page. They're minilite lookalikes from three different manufacturers, but they look similar enough that its no prob. The major drawback : they were painted black. I kinda like that look on track cars, but for my car, I was pretty admant - its gotta be silver. My goal : get a reasonable look (like the famous DIYers 10 foot paint job) without spending too much time or money - those are already spoken for.

Here's one of em in the before state. The dust really shows up in this pic, they actually didn't look too bad.

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Also featured in that pic was a spray acn of aircraft stripper. The directions said to wait for 10-20 minutes. Here's what the paint looked like within seconds :

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That stuff is awesome ! I used a ScotchBrite pad to wipe the paint away, mainly 'cause I had already bought some. It was like wiping fried eggs out of a well-oiled pan. I did go back and hit it with a second coat, mainly to clean up sections I didn't spray thoroughly enough. The stuff is fairly smelly (like a way, way neglected litter box), but with good ventilation it's totally bearable. The tiniest speck of it on your skin, OTOH, is not.

Here's a wheel after two passes of stripper, and a warm water rinse (water neutralizes the stripper) :

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Then I went at the wheels w/ a bead blaster. For fancy-schmancy wheels, I know you're not supposed to use used media, but that's what I had on hand. I know, I know. Anyway, here's how they came out :

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After this, I just did some scrubbing in hot soapy water, mainly on the surface that's inside the tire. I think I was just going kinda nuts, no real reason for this. Except maybe to get the surface where the bead sits free of crud. Then I realized that two of the wheels had a sort of painted-on stuff on the inside, so I hit that w/ stripper, only I ran out, and well, it's gonna take a little more work. Anyway, here's the result, (with Pikes Peak in the background) :

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Pretty sweet, at the correct distance.....


I like the fresh blasted alloy look, but I'm afraid it would look like crap after hitting the brakes once. Also the fronts (outer 2) are a different color than the rears (inner). The fronts are quite a bit nicer looking close up, but those rears are LIGHT ! My plan is to take 'em home and put 'em on back on the living room floor for the cats to enjoy (I put a few lug bolts under the centers - drives the cats crazy.) And I'll stare at them and decide what needs to be done to prep them. I want to get a little more of the old paint/goop out of the channels where the tire bead sits, and I might sand some of the curb rash out. And there's a few spots I missed in the valve area and the lug bolt holes. But next weekend I'll do the degreaser and give them couple coats of rattle can silver, followed by rattle can clear.

Those look pretty nice Jeff.

look nice.

i was hoping this thread was about welding in barrels to make em 10" wide....

Man they look great.

I hope this isn't bad news but-
they are two different patterns, 8 spoke and 10 spoke. That would not stop me from using them though. I might paint the spokes black and rim silver, like a five bolt fuchs.