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MadManMike

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Decided to refurbish my wheels seeing as though they're off for winter. They all have a bit of curb rash and one has/ had a chunk missing from inside the dish. Anyway ill let the photos do the talking. I really enjoyed doing it and am happy with the results seeing as though its my first time


Gave the wheel a full wash to remove any previous wax/ sealant that i'd put on using a multi purpose degreaser.
Iron X pulling out any other contaminants i missed:

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Sanding the curb rash flat ready for filler

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Bought Metalik from Halfrauds, which is a filler with iron particles in it. 'Its like replacing metal with metal"

When on really easy and is not to bad to sand down

Some advice, dont do it in your room like i did, its really messy and has quite a strong scent :P

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Started with 120 wet and dry and ended up with 1200 using all in between. Keyed the old paint ready for primer.

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Forgot to take photos of putting the primer on.. Put 3 coats on wet and drying in between coats

Applied around 4 coats of paint, again wet and drying between coats


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Put roughly 4 coats of Lacquer on it without wet and drying and im really happy with how it turned out:

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Only 3 more to do :P

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I wouldn't bother going any further then 600grit to be honest with you, by hand it's more then sufficient and the gains are so tiny. Look good thou man.

Edit, just re-read your post. If your wet and drying between coats don't after your final base of silver. Sanding a metallic cuts the 'fleck' in the metallic so you get all sorts of weird sparkles. If your confident enough and at a ideal working temperature once your primer work is finished apply your first base of silver, leave 20ish minutes, 2nd coat of silver (no sanding needed, your coat will still be soft enough to use as a tack coat). Apply a 3rd if required then start with your clear coat repeating the same pattern up to 2/3 coats. Job jobbed, time halved :P

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I wouldn't bother going any further then 600grit to be honest with you, by hand it's more then sufficient and the gains are so tiny. Look good thou man.

Edit, just re-read your post. If your wet and drying between coats don't after your final base of silver. Sanding a metallic cuts the 'fleck' in the metallic so you get all sorts of weird sparkles. If your confident enough and at a ideal working temperature once your primer work is finished apply your first base of silver, leave 20ish minutes, 2nd coat of silver. Apply a 3rd if required then start with your clear coat repeating the same pattern up to 2/3 coats. Job jobbed, time halved :P

Yeah i did start to think to myself about no seeing any gains past 600grit. Didn't know that about the wet drying when doing the silver. I'm not sure if its my technique or the can but i found the rattle can spitting quite a lot, which left the freshly painted surface quite rough? Will keep that in mind doing the others! Thanks :)

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As your getting down the aerosol the thinners will be separating from the paint (plus your fingers going dead :P) therefor thicker paint through a tiny nozzle, gives a spluttery spray from the can.

Put your aerosol in some warm/hot water for a few minutes before you paint too. It'll thin the paint a little for you so it flows nicely, too hot thou and it'll dry on landing so you'll get no flow or nicely settled metallics. The only other advantage of roasting hot aerosols is you can pretty much bollock it on.

By orbital sander you'll see no gains really passed 4-500 grit, by hand with paper 6-800 is about right.

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Look epic mr T!!

One massive piece of advice I can give to you and wish I would have known it from the start is to chuck your aerosol in a bucket of hot water for 10 mins prior to spraying, it increases the pressure of the propellant inside the can and makes the paint come out sooooo much better / uniform in thickness and completely prevents spluttering! You might already be doing that though but just incase it proper helped me :)

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Goodyear vector 4 seasons.

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Used them shit loads on 500L Trekking and 4x4 Fiat Panda.

They are really good and the road noise isn't too bad either.

Will look into them, thanks... The freelander has 225 55 r17s on it, dont wanna go too huge profile but as i want it to be as good off road as possible its tricky. Also a toss up because I will drive all over the country on motorways then need the offroad capability once I get there.

BFG ATs if you can find some in that size! Awesome tyres.

These are what I am after ideally! Another Isuzu we have uses them, not sure how big I can get away with diameter wise as the current ones are pretty low profile for a 4x4 (55).

New to offroading!

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Got a few pics from fitting the H&R rarb the other day.

The clamps

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Looking a tad rusty :/

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Due to the sizes you have to rachet strap the bar a bit to get it to fit in the rear beam. I have no idea how to use a ratchet strap haha

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All on!

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Unfortunately the bolts supplied with the clamps weren't long enough for my rear beam so I had to get some new ones for 80p haha

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Edited by dann2707
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As in one solid piece and not rear independent suspension? Yep!

Still get mega flex down there regardless.

cant see how using metal pipe clips (or whatever you call them) to hold an arb would be possible, let alone cause less flex than a fixed axle.

If it had some substantial brackets that mounted to a solid part of the bodywork, i could see it marginally reducing the flex.

but oh well, your problem :P

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rear ARB's on a VAG beam work, big time.

The rear beam design is a purposefully flexible V shape to allow a degee of indenendance between the two sides.

Adding the ARB joining the two sides, and clamping it rigidly to the beam resists this flex and reduced roll.

As Adam said though, despite the change in feel, it isn't always actually better, but the balance and driving feel will certainly be altered

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Will look into them, thanks... The freelander has 225 55 r17s on it, dont wanna go too huge profile but as i want it to be as good off road as possible its tricky. Also a toss up because I will drive all over the country on motorways then need the offroad capability once I get there.

These are what I am after ideally! Another Isuzu we have uses them, not sure how big I can get away with diameter wise as the current ones are pretty low profile for a 4x4 (55).

New to offroading!

The ATs would do you very well, i've always been really impressed with them. Go skinny and tall if it's gonna be playing in the mud.

You'll probably find the lack of a low ratio transfer box more limiting than the tyre choice off road, though :P

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Dan's rear ARB absolutely will make a difference. I think you're getting confused between a live axle and a torsion beam axle, they're different things. On a live axle you'd be right that you'd need to bridge to the body for it to do anything, but despite how it looks a beam axle is technically 'independant'.

On a live axle the wheels are placed either end of a rigid bar/tube, so they always remain perpendicular to the axle tube, this isn't independent because when one wheel moves upwards, the beam is placed at an angle, so the opposite wheel tilts to remain perpendicular to the tube. Also the springs/shocks have to be mounted inboard of the ends of the beam, so when one wheel moves up, the other is pushed down, as the axle pivots around the spring/shock.

On a torsion beam axle, the wheels are mounted to trailing arms which are linked by a beam that can flex down its length. Because this beam is near the pivot point of the trailing arm, not the wheel, when a wheel moves upwards, the beam flexes and both wheels remain vertical. The beam's stiffness in resisting flex will try and pull the other wheel upwards too, basically making the 'beam' part of it a big ARB. What dan's done is increase the beams stiffness to resist this flex, giving even more anti-roll. The mountings are a tried and tested method which works just fine.

As for Adams point that they don't necessarily add grip, it's true that in a lot of cases adding anti-roll won't increase the overall grip levels, but not in all cases. They can be an effective way of balancing a car, so adding or removing anti-roll from just one end of a car can fix understeer/oversteer issues. Also in cars like most people have been talking about in this thread, with torsion beam rear suspension and mcphereson strut front, the wheels will pretty much always remain vertical in relation to the cars body, not the road, so if you've got 5deg of body roll (which doesn't seem like a huge amount) you've got 5deg of camber on all 4 wheels in the opposite direction to the one you want, which is a LOT especially for wide low profile tyres like most of the VAG cars in this thread are running.

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The ATs would do you very well, i've always been really impressed with them. Go skinny and tall if it's gonna be playing in the mud.

You'll probably find the lack of a low ratio transfer box more limiting than the tyre choice off road, though :P

Yeah no diff locks either... To be fair I'm not exactly doing the camel trophy, its more muddy fields than anything, but some fields can be particularly wet and particularly slippery. The Isuzu we have with ATs on it has never had a problem, but the ford ranger with standard road tyres has had to be pulled out a few times. Trying to make up for lack of low ratio box and diff locks with decent tyres really.

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Look epic mr T!!

One massive piece of advice I can give to you and wish I would have known it from the start is to chuck your aerosol in a bucket of hot water for 10 mins prior to spraying, it increases the pressure of the propellant inside the can and makes the paint come out sooooo much better / uniform in thickness and completely prevents spluttering! You might already be doing that though but just incase it proper helped me :)

Took your advice here Dan, 10 minutes in boiling water, and then heated with a hair dryer and it went on so much better with little to no splatter! Thanks :D

Arb is looking good. Noticeable difference straight away from the first drive?

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Yay that's good news matey! Glad it helped :)

Definitely!! It feels so much more planted now, experienced a tad bit of lift off oversteer the other day which was fun. The car doesn't sway around as much either, really loving it.

Just uploaded my latest map onto the car, need to go for a test drive :D

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Passat has developed a boot opening issue :(

The boot won't open if I use the release button on the actual boot. The release switch on the drivers door works (Although it only releases the boot half open so it is not possible to pull it open). The only way I can open the boot is by using the button on the key fob or by using the key in the keyhole on the boot lid.

The boot worked as normal this morning but after driving 10 miles the problem started and the button has not worked since. The rubber covering on the release appears to have split and it has been pissing it down for weeks so I suspect water has made its way inside and broken the button. Although this is car electrics so it probably won't be as simple as that!

Has anyone else had to fix a similar issue? This must be an identical locking system that is used on various VAG vehicles.

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Still not bonding with driving cars, Maybe id prefer something older and a better drive? My skoda just feels too fake/no sensation despite being a good car, Maybe because i come from a motorbike background. Im not fused about the speed as such though, Might have too take your advice dan haha

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