Back in Black

Recently, I decided to change up the appearance of the '66. I didn't want to spend a lot of money on it though. I wanted to do some side stripes and wanted to change the look of the wheels. Ultimately, I added vinyl black side stripes and painted the wheel centers gloss black.

For the stripes I went with side stripes for a '67-'68. I wanted taller stripes and not the thinner GT-style stripes from '65-'66. I bought these from one of the mail order places for only $20. When I installed them I didn't wrap them around the edges of the panels, trimming them about 1/8" away instead. On the front fenders, I trimmed the stripe at the beginning of the wheel arch rather than up to the edge of the wheelwell itself.

To paint the wheels I bought a can of Rustoleum gloss black paint (to supplement a partial can I had on hand.) My Vintage Wheel Works wheels have coarse aluminum centers, but I had already added some silver paint a few years ago, since they had taken on a gold-tone over the years.

Ready for paint: I bagged each wheel and covered each lug hole with a coin. When taping the wheels I simply trimmed the edges with the edge of a razor blade—and did not have to follow the circular edges with dozens of pieces of tape around the wheel.

Side 2: In addition to cleaning the wheel before paint, I used a red Scotchbrite pad to scuff the surface to allow the new paint to adhere properly.

Three coats later...

Ready for the car...

Black stripes and black wheels installed. :)

Mentioned in this post:

New Shoes!

I bought a set of new tires the other day. Previously I was using 225/50/ZR16 (front) and 245/45/ZR16 (rear) Dunlop Sport 8000s on the Vintage Wheel Works V45 wheels. These tires were old and frankly with tire performance technology at an all-time high today, I figured I should splurge for some new tires.

I ended up with a set of Dunlop Direzza Sport Z1 Star Spec tires in 225/50/R16. They ride way better and grip way better, which I expected since they are highly rated on Tire Rack. I am using 36/36 for air pressure, and will adjust over the next couple hundred miles as they wear in. Since they are the same size and not staggered, I can rotate them around the car too.

One item to note is that these Vintage Wheel Works wheels are lug-centric (the lug nuts are tapered and center the wheel on the axle through tapered holes in the wheel), which is uncommon enough today that four local shops I visited to get the tires mounted and balanced had no idea what lug-centric even was. Most shops expect hub-centric wheels (the wheels are machined to center the wheel on the axle through the hole in the middle of the wheel -- no tapered lug nuts or lug holes) and attach the wheel/tire to be balanced with a hub attachment through the middle of the wheel.

These wheels couldn't be balanced properly that way (although each shop said they could until I explained the difference) and required the attachment that connected the wheel to the balancer through the five lug holes. The fifth shop had the attachment in the back room and literally figured out how to use it on my wheels. They balanced one wheel with the hub attachment and then the lug attachment for practice, and sure enough got two different balances. But they are all perfectly balanced now. Woo hoo!

Odds And Ends: Part I

The wheels on the car are from Vintage Wheel Works and are the V45 style in 16"x8" front and rear. I painted them with Eastwoods Wheel Paint in Charcoal Gray. The stock center caps though were cheap plastic and didn't look good being just too big. The lug nuts were kinda old and scraped up and didn't look too good either.

The photo at left shows one of the old lug nuts and the four packs of new ones. The car has McGard wheel locks so I got some good McGard lug nuts too. The old lug nuts are duplex style (a small shank at the bottom along with a 60 degree tapered seat.) The new lug nuts (McGard 64000 Chrome Cone Seat Style Lug Nuts (1/2' - 20 Thread Size)) don't have a shank, but do have a 60 degree tapered seat so VWW says they'll work fine.

I bought the billet center caps from "torqthrust.terry" on eBay. They were polished, but I polished them again when they arrived and now they are muy shiny.

Here's a manufacturer photo of the V45 16x8.





And here's a pic of the stock plastic center cap that comes with the wheels, which I replaced with polished caps. (It's also on the wheel above.)