8 Spoke Alloy Wheel Colour Change

Around a week after dropping my (new) 8 spoke R500 wheels into the guys at Mint Alloys, I got a call to say they were ready... I asked the guys there to take a few pictures of the process, so you could see what's involved in repainting alloy wheels to a factory standard.

So the process went like this...
I dropped the wheels off and chose a colour... Initially I thought the factory finished anthracite colour from Caterham would give me a good contrast with the orange rim, but once I had the full set I instantly knew they were too light.  So when at Mint alloys I chose a dark grey colour with a bit of a silver metallic flake in, called... well I'll get onto the colour name in a bit...
Here are the wheels with the colour swatch to show the difference in colour that would be achieved.

Caterham R500 8 spoke 13" wheels in factory finish anthracite grey.

Now onto the wheel refurbishment process
The wheel gets chemically stripped for roughly a couple of hours and ends up looking like this:-

Chemically stripped Caterham R500 8 spoke wheel.

After chemical stripping, the wheels are cleaned down and dried, then checked for any kerb damage (as mine were new wheels and weren't damaged this checking part was unnecessary)

Any light kerb damage would be removed using hand tools, but for the larger deeper damage in some instances a weld will be added proud of the wheel rim then the wheel would be re-profiled accordingly.

The wheel then goes into the blast cabinet for media blasting using an ally oxide for cleaning and keying to allow the powder coat to adhere properly.

Wheel after media blasting.

After the media blasting process is complete, the wheels are then blown down using an air line to remove any residual media used in the blasting process.

The wheels then go into the clean room where the guys at mint allows apply a coat of an anti corrosive product to the naked wheel to eliminate potential future corrosion problems.  The wheel is then placed in the oven and runs through a bake known as a de-gas cycle at a temperature of 200c for approximately 20-25 minutes.

My wheels with what looks like a set of 997 turbo wheels in the oven in the 'degassing cycle'

Once the wheels have been de-gassed and whilst they're still warm, a coat of powder coat primer is applied which in my case was black.

Wheels powder coated in black.

The wheel is then placed back in the oven for a green cure which assists with the cross adhesion of the paints later in the process.  Once the wheels have gone through the green cure process the wheels are pulled out of the oven and are allowed to cool slightly where the team at Mint Alloys then apply a wet coat of chosen colour, in my instance this is annoyingly called 'Skoda glitter black' as apposed to 'Jaguar glitter black' which is the same colour... Anyway I now have Skoda on my Caterham R500 which I guess will make the fastest Skoda wheel painted car around?

Wheel painted with Skoda glitter black

Once the wheels have been painted they are allowed to 'flash off' which means the paint is allowed to semi dry.  Once the wheels have cooled sufficiently the guys at Mint Alloys apply a powder lacquer coat (which appears white before baking) and then the wheels are put back in the oven for the final heat cycle for around 20 minutes.

Wheels with Powder Lacquer coat before final baking.

And after the final bake the wheels are is finished. The final picture of the alloys is below, and I am very happy with them.  They are a superb dark grey colour with a small bit of metallic flake in them to bling them up a little.  The only real problem is the 'Skoda' part of the colour name!  I guess from now on I'll refer to the colour as 'Jaguar glitter black'

Having used Mint Alloys a number of times in the past, I was once again left very happy with the end result.  They really do a good job, and with all the equipment they have, they make your wheels like new again.  A link to their site is here http://www.mintalloys.com and it's best to speak with Andy (who loves Caterhams and used to race in the Academy in 2002!) or his business partner Keith.

On the way back from Mint Alloys I dropped the wheels off to Dave at Daytona Coachworx who will be painting the wheel rim over the next three or four weeks.  We discussed where the rim should be masked to and how large the orange rim will be.  After looking at some pictures online we decided to go right around the curved section of the rim and a sample mask was laid onto the wheel.

New wheels with a sample mask laid onto rim.

And the final piece of the puzzle was the get a RAL colour to match the decals on the car.  I didn't have a RAL chart so ordered one off eBay.  It arrived this morning and I offered up the RAL chart to the decals on the bonnet and it looks like RAL 2004 is the colour the rims will be painted in.

Mactac Semi Flourescent orange decals on Caterham R500 match RAL 2004 colour code.

So the next stage will be to let Dave do his work and then collect the wheels from him in three to four weeks.  Then get the AVON ZZR's fitted, paint the tyre wall and this project will be finished.

More tyre and new wheel updates

Following on from my previous post I seem to have accumulated a reasonable collection of rubber... 


My growing stack of fresh rubber - Avon ZZr's and CR500's

A brand new set of Avon ZZR's that I'm dying to try out, and some new rear CR500's as having covered around 2,600 miles my existing rears are very much on their last few microns of tread... I'm not too sure having this many tyres laying around is a normal behaviour, but I'm guessing it is with Caterham ownership... and with any luck by the end of the year a large proportion of this rubber (if not all of it) will be heavily embedded in some tarmac either in the UK, France or maybe even further afield!

The poll results (as they stand right now)
The results to the poll for what colour wheel option I should go for are as follows:-


Current Poll Results.

Gloss orange is the winner with 49 votes, Matte Black with Orange rim came in second with 45 votes and the standard anthracite was the least favourite option with 27 votes.

Having considered the results (and thanks for all your votes by the way) I've also taken into account the fact that a couple of my mates have pumped in some fictitious votes to get the gloss orange to win... I'm declaring my original favourite the Matte Black with Orange rim the overall winner.

Organising the wheel repainting
So onto getting the wheels painted up.  I ended up ordering a set of front wheels from Demon Tweeks a couple of days ago, as the second hand set I was going to get from Steff (on Blatchat) may not have been up to standard and Caterham didn't have any stock.  Nevertheless, the front wheels arrived yesterday.

I used a local company (Mint Alloys) to refurbish some diamond cut alloys I owned many years ago and they done a really good job... So I decided to contact them to see if they could repaint these new wheels and paint the orange rim.  They said they weren't geared up for getting a good finish on the rim, but would be happy to assist with the new colour I was looking to achieve.  I'm not entirely sure the Matte black will be as good as I initially hoped, so have decided on a very dark grey instead... I daren't mention the name of the colour code of the grey (for reasons I'll make clear in the future).. but decided to make a final mock up last night of what I'm trying to achieve to ensure 100% before I committed - so here is what it 'should' look like:-


My Caterham R500 with photoshopped wheel and tyre mock-up

I can't quite get the right orange on the photoshop image, but it'll be the same as the orange in the stripe on the bodywork.  I've also whitened the AVON wording on the tyrewalls too.

Knowing that mint alloys won't be painting the rims, I contacted Dave at Daytona Coachworx - the chap that finished off the carbon headlights (that I've still to fit) and he said he'd happily paint the wheel rims for me provided I gave him the colour code that I wanted.

So earlier today I dropped the wheels off at mint alloys and they said they should be finished in a couple of days.  Below is a picture of the wheels with the new colour swatch offered up against the old (which are new) 'factory anthracite' coloured wheels - it doesn't look much of a difference in the picture, but they'll be much darker - close to black once they're finished.


Anthracite Caterham R500 8 spoke alloy wheels with new colour swatch offered up against them.

And when finished they should look something like this:-

New colour for the wheels

I'm already looking forward to getting them back, seeing what they look like, then getting them straight over to Dave at Daytona Coachworx so he can get busy painting the rims.


Fresh Rubber and New Wheel Update

Thanks to everyone who has voted for what colour wheel option I should be going with.  I'd appreciate any further votes by visiting this link but at the time of writing this post, the poll results are as follows:-


Poll results at time of writing this post.

The results to date indicates the favourite option to be the full gloss orange, with the matt black/anthracite and orange rim second then the standard full anthracite finish the least favourite option. 

Wanting a full on loud wheel paint job, I am tempted to go with the majority vote, but something is drawing me to the orange wheel rim option.  The look I'm trying to achieve is something like these two images below, but with an orange rim instead of yellow:-


Caterham with 8 spoke anthracite wheels with yellow rim.

Another view of the development R600 with anthracite wheels with yellow rim.

Like I said above, I'll appreciate any further votes by visiting this link

 

Yesterday (Wednesday 28th Jan) I got an email from Stef on the lotus 7 forum in response to a 'wanted' advert I placed about some 8 spoke wheels.  He has a full set of 6x13's which will be fine for the front, but I need 8x13's for the wider rears.  He should be meeting me next week to drop off a couple of 6x13" front wheels for me - which sorts out the front, all I needed to do is get some rears.

 

With the lack of response on the rears, I decided to bite the bullet and get the 8x13's ordered directly from Caterham along with a full set of brand new ZZR rubber too.  Caterham seem to excel in the speed of delivery for parts ordered online, as they arrived this morning to my delight.

New 8x13" 8 spoke alloys with full set of new ZZR's

All I need to do now is find a company who can paint the rim orange, and if I can't find a company to do that I'll get them finished in gloss orange.

New Track Day Wheels and Tyres - your votes are required..!

As I'm not a big fan of new years resolutions, I thought long and hard about ten things I wanted to try and do in (or for) my Caterham in 2015...

One of the things that came to mind was to get onto some ZZR tyres for extra grip on track days... I'd spoken to some of my friends who have tried the ZZR's and after taking their advice, I'm considering staying with the CR500's for the road and having a spare set of wheels with ZZR's fitted for track day use... I don't have a trailer (or a car where I can fit a tow-bar to either) so I need to be able to drive my car to track days, so the rubber needs to be road legal!

So... onto what wheels to get... As I've got 13" wheels, and want to stick with the smaller wheel size, the only real options to consider are:-

• The New Caterham Apollo wheels
• A set of Team Dynamics Pro Race 1.2's
• or another set of the Caterham Superlight 8 spoke wheels that I already have. 

I don't like the styling of the Apollo wheels, I think the Team Dynamics wheels don't look that good either, so I think I'm going to stick with another set of the Superlight 8 spoke wheels... If anyone out there has a set that they're looking to sell please get in contact!

I'm thinking as they're only going to be for occasional use, I may add a bit of colour to them to make them stand out a bit more, so I'm reaching out to the readers of my blog with a poll to see what the general consensus of what wheel colour I should go for...  Here are the options:-

Option 1 - Standard Anthracite


Option 1 - Standard Anthracite 8 spoke wheels

Option 2 - Gloss Orange wheels (please forgive my poor photoshop skills!)
(they should look more like the colour of the inset OZ racing wheels)


Option 2 - Gloss Orange Wheels

Option 3 - A bit of both... Matt black spokes, with orange rim and to give it a more 'racing' look... white AVON and ZZR wording on the tyrewall

(tyrewall wording like inset picture)

Option 3 - Matt black spokes with orange rim and white tyrewall wording

So it's over to you to give me your feedback...

How to vote
Using the poll below, simply click the radio button of the wheel colour option you like most, and click the 'Vote' button...

POLL... What colour wheels shall I get?

Option 1 - Standard Anthracite

Option 2 - Gloss Orange

Option 3 - Matt Black with Orange Rim and Painted Tyrewall Lettering

 

pollcode.com free polls

Although I know which option I like best, I'm really keen to see what the general consensus is! And any other comments/ideas are welcome too!

My First Blat of 2015

Sitting here typing right now, with the rain spilling down outside makes me extremely glad I took yesterday's glorious weather as a good opportunity to get my first blat of the year in.

So it was on with three fleeces, some gloves, my new blatting hat, my blatting shades and I was pretty much ready to go...  The car had been sitting in the garage for a couple of months, so I wasn't sure it was going to start... 

As you can tell it did, and what a great day for it... The roads were (fairly) empty and dry, but wow it was cold... Note to self - an additional fleece needed and I'll need to research a better blat hat - as the one I was wearing kept blowing off!

First blat of 2015 done.

So that was that - I wonder how long it'll be until I get another chance to go out again... This weekend looks like a total washout, and with work on Monday my next 'chance' will be next weekend, but I already know I've other stuff going on... So it could be a while - best get researching some new bits to buy instead!

Lego Caterham

It's 9pm and I'm still mildly hungover from a fairly large session last night - so what better to do than  research something to build...?

I started off on Lego's and then thought... What about a Caterham Lego?  Is there one already out there...?  A quick Google search later gave this result...

A Lego Caterham 620R in the same colours as my R500... I want it!  Made by a chap called Carl Greatrix and with support we could get Lego to actually produce this kit (details below)

Here are some pictures:-

Lego Caterham 620R

Lego Caterham 620R

Here is a link to Carls flickr album with all the pictures for the 620R variant:-

https://www.flickr.com/photos/bricktrix/sets/72157649889984995/

He has also made an R500 version in the familiar white with red stripe colour scheme:-

A Lego Caterham R500!

Here is a link to Carls flickr album with all the pictures for the R500 variant:-

https://www.flickr.com/photos/bricktrix/sets/72157649494604928/

You must read this:-

The really good thing is... with support, and enough votes Lego will put these kits into production...!  So you all need to show your support for this kit by clicking on the Lego link below and then clicking the blue support button on the right hand side of the Lego page:-

https://ideas.lego.com/projects/87703/updates

Let's give him plenty of support and make this happen.

New Year Resolutions Caterham Style

Happy New Year to everyone who reads my blog...
...So with a new year there's always a load of boring resolutions that you never end up sticking to, so I thought I'd make a list of some things I want to do this year - Caterham style.

In no particular order:-

1. Try and do a bit more blogging
2. Attend the North herts meet more than twice
3. Do at least two trips to Wales
4. Go to Folembray (mid May I think)
5. Get to Ledenon circuit at some point
6. Get the car flat floored
7. Get a set of Nitron shocks (or similar)
8. Have a rolling road tune to max out the bhp
9. Blitz through my new rear CR500's and get onto ZZR's
10. Fit the carbon headlights I desperately NEEDED... six months ago!

I think ten things is a good starting point.  Let's see if I can get that lot done - I'll give it a darn good try.
Oh yeah and do more of this:-

Me driving my Caterham R500

Well not on the motorway!  So 2015 it is, a year of driving heaven (hopefully!)