Wheel color

[Hank Jarrett]

It's time to repaint my wheels, put the new tires and tubes on and do a good repack of the wheel bearings. Does anybody know what color the wheels are SUPPOSED to be? I have a 41 BC-12-65 Deluxe and the current color is,....well, hard to describe. Kind of Wall Mart cart of unsold disgusting colors rattle can something or other. I have seen wheels in white, silver, either of the trim colors and black. Anybody know what the factory painted them before the war? If I'm going to paint them anyway, I might as well use the right color. Hard to tell from the pictures in the "Taylorcraft Story".
Hank

[3Dreaming]

Re: Wheel color

Hank, I don't know , but if I was guessing I would say they were natural aluminum. If they were painted it would have been from the vendor. Tom

[Carl E. Carson]

Re: Wheel color

My '40 came new with just bare aluminum, they still are.

Carl

[Forrest Barber]

Re: Wheel color

no paint, saves weight.... To make pretty , here we use black.

[Dano"T"]

Re: Wheel color

http://gallery.taylorcraft.org/main.php?g2_itemId=3740

Try Chrome Powder Coat.

[Jim Herpst]

Re: Wheel color

Amazing what makes my putter flutter. I just love those BARE Shinn Wheels.

Purty . Often I have said they help make a Taylorcraft a Taylorcraft.

Party naked with the wheels ! Thats the way God ,Byron (Shinn) and ,CG Taylor wanted em.

[Joel Severinghaus]

Re: Wheel color

My wheels were originally bare metal, but they got painted gloss black during the restoration last winter. My ship is going in for some touch-up painting, and I'm going to have the wheels sand-blasted back to bare metal again.

[Greg Guy]

Re: Wheel color

I used Aluma Blast on mine. Look great!
Used this product on autos in the past.
Rebuilders told me of the trick.

One example is http://pressroom.eastwood.com/ABRelease.htm

......greg

[flyguy]

Re: Wheel color

Joel, wouldn't sand blast. I have a wheel that was sand blasted. Makes a rough finish. Use stripper, or bead blast, or as suggested above. Take my word it doesn't come out good.
Darryl

[Hank Jarrett]

Re: Wheel color

Guys, I cleaned the wheels, and hand sanded some small areas. Had to do a little blend work with a file on a couple of small nicks but they came out looking really nice. I didn't even remove every bit of paint, just blended it in for a smooth finish. Followed that with a nice coat of wheel paint from Advance Auto (a bare aluminum color of silver) and they look GREAT!
Only problem now is to get the new tires mounted. I am happy enough with the results to do the wheels on my Miata next. An $8 can of spray paint did a nicer job than a friend got from a $75 each Powder Coat job.
Hank

[flyguy]

Re: Wheel color

Yep, mine are spray can OSHA yellow. Hey, it's a fun plane, what can I say. As someone said about painting, first it's the prep, the next thing is the prep and finally you have to prep it right. I got jest one thing to say 'bout mountin tires on split rims: "talcum powder."
DC