After moving from Atlanta to Charleston, I noticed a few unusual things with the car. One of them being rust on the wheel hubs. It is probably from the high humidity here and the salt water. Regardless, this weekend I was determined to fix this problem.
The rust I am referring to:
Yes, this is happening on all four wheels and you can see it with the wheels on as well.
After I lifted the Macan using the Quickjack 7000, I removed all four tires and got to work. One quick note on the Quickjack, I love it so far but with the Macan and the longer wheel base, and the length of the Quickjack, I had to line it up where it is on back- half of the front jackpoint and the front-half of the back jackpoint. It worked fine but you have very little wiggle room when lifting the Macan.
At first, I thought I would be able to use some basic chemicals to clean the rust off and proceed from there; however, that was not the case. After scrubbing on one wheel for 15 minutes and not removing it, using multiple chemicals, I had to move to the next level. I broke out the 2000 grain sand paper and wet sanded the remaining rust that I could not get out.
After I sanded it, I decided to repaint it. Before painting, the fun part, paint prep (taping off the rotors, calipers and any other area you don't want to get paint on. Once the area was taped off, I used GTechniq's panel wipe to clean off any remaining chemicals or dirt on the soon to be painted area. Once that was dry, I applied 3 coats of the "Aluminum" color spray paint that I bought from Home Depot. The paint that I bought was a primer and paint, so I didn't need to prime it.
I applied 3 coasts of paint, waiting 15 minutes between coats; and then I applied 3 coats of clear coat (20 minutes between coats).
After my final application of clear coat, I waited four hours before applying GTechniq's C5 Wheel Armour. After the C5 was applied I waited 24 hours before putting the wheels back on. Since the wheels were already off, I cleaned them up, polished them, and Ceramic Coated them as well.
Here is the finished project:
These wheels don't look too bad for having over 50,000 miles on them:
If you have any additional questions or want to know the products I use, feel free to comment or email me directly: por4mancedc@gmail.com