In the Miami Meanderings thread, I finished off the exhaust system surgery with new brackets and new bolts/nuts on the r/s exchanger, u-tube, and manifold. That was sort of exhausting.
After the second curing test drive, I pulled into the garage and noted the aroma of curing paint, the aching of back, and the arthritic warnings coming from finger joints. Great time for a little recuperation, right?
Wrong. See, whilst filing flanges, I had also parted the seas of the distribution bureaucracy of a particularly diffident tire manufacturer, and had spoken with Stephanie at Maxxis in Suwanee GA to grant me the name of her go-to guy at Tire Center International (Matt) who gave me the name of the surprised guy at Real Deal Tires in Hickory NC to send eight (8) Maxxis 751 tires to Discount Tire's Kristopher in Pensacola. Yep. Stephanie had told me that the 14" Maxxis radial tire was being discontinued, and I was allegedly vacuuming up the remaining tires in the supply chain.
So, the third curing test drive was a little trip over to Discount to mount 4 of the 8 on NaranjaWesty. The tires taken off had been installed on the BobD in 2014 . . .
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. . . and had done 2 1/2 Itinerary laps, (about 50,000 miles with tread depth down down to 5/32"). I demand serious good tread depth on Itinerary laps to be prepared for heavy rains and crazy trails or desert washes.
I am a terrible customer for busy big box tires stores, but Kristopher was a trouper (<note correct spelling) and I drove out of there with correct air pressures, correct lug nut torques, no damage to the undercarriage, and four additional new tires and drove back to the RodneyTheAirlinePilot's garage so the little Lionel Train kid could mock my next move:
My next move was to remove the right rear wheel with the brand new tire and start sanding. Do you all remember when I painted all four of these wheels at a roadside rest stop and an abandoned shop in Texas in 2010? Sanding off the original Volkswagen paint was so easy. I painted those wheels in two days.
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Wail hail. **This paint is engine enamel! Four coats! It ain't coming off!** Oh my god, what have I begun?? By the end of the evening, my finger nails are separating from their quicks. I don't
want to paint my wheels any more.
Look at this mess!
The back side was even worse, but my attitude is extremely devoted to the notion that these wheels have to be perfect, and the back side has to be prepared as fully as the front side. Gawd, I *hate* sanding and sanding, it is going to take ALL MONTH. It did take all day to sand, dremel down the weld spatter from the factory, and dress the nicks and gouges from the 140,000 miles total that these wheels have rolled. My back was raging, my fingers were tormented, and it was just Wheel Number One:
Day two, Wheel Two, I switched to paint stripper from Home Depot, very carefully applied because it says on the can right there "do not allow product to contact rubber". After the stripper, I then had to scrape the gunky paint off. Then I called upon the famous and long-suffering and dangerous Law Firm's Craftsman drill of old Chloe window polishing days to scuff the rims. That poor drill got so hot I could not hold it. It would go into a chicken scream every once in a while, so I would lubricate the bearings, tap it against the pavement and go back at it. This drill has been known to catch GumOut vapors aflame with its exposed brushes just sparking away:
I could feel electricity leaking out onto my hands as I cleaned the wheel. But I was so grateful for the paint stripper assist that it re-energized me in this project:
By day three, RodneyThePilot is offering extremely sensible suggestions that I wonderingly accepted stupidly.
1. "Put the wheel on this upside down garbage can, then you won't kill your back."
2. "Tape the rim without the plastic sheeting then you can tape the sheeting onto the tape willy-nilly."
3. "Why didn't you sandblast the rims when the tires were off?"
Yeah, so look how carefully I cleaned the groove here. Jeweler's screwdriver in endless circles with the wheel tilted down, followed by a razor blade, then hand painted just before spraying:
Yesterday morning, you wonder why I wasn't responding to your PM's, jtauxe? I was crazed to get this behind me:
(hubcaps all have three coats clearcoat over the rust-catalyzing primer)
Here's the last wheel. I ran out of Discount Tire plastic bag dropcloths. This here is 26 WalMart plastic bags from the recycling stash here at the house:
Day Four, evening. Such a relief, to be done, huh?
The right front hubcap fell off three miles from the house, I didn't even know it. When I got to my destination, it was pointed out to me that I was missing the hubcap. I re-traced my steps, certain that I knew where it had fallen off, yards from the house.
"Yeah, I heard it, but it didn't sound like a hubcap coming off, it sounded like something had shifted in the interior."
Well, no hubcap to be found at the spot where I was so damn certain. I eyed a little delinquent punk shiftily scuttling into his house, certain anew that he had stolen it for his stupid little punk wall collection. Then I re-traced my route in its entirety, "as a measure of respect to my old once-intact Volkswagen" I said to RodneyThePilot. I was getting more hyper-irritated by the mile, at the traffic, at the busy-ness of rush hour in Pensacola, at shifty little parasitic punks who scarf valuable old hubcaps, as I cast an eye along the shoulders of the roads.
Holy heck, that must be it, a shiny little flying saucer in a hedge along Cervantes at 14th Street. Pulled a u-turn and reconnoitered and pulled another u-turn and there it was. Stopped, loitered along the hedge, plucked the flying saucer, and stuck it back on my VW to the marveling eye of an old lady walking her little dog.
"And then, Gladis, he just walked into the hedge and came out with this shiny hubcap and it fit perfectly on his camper, I don't know, I know, I don't know, it just fit and he drove off. Oh, Skipper was barking his head off."