Restoring RO-Style wheels on the B

Whilst many people will opt for the Mini-lite wheel in preference to the RO-style (aka Rostyle), the Rubery-Owen styled (hence RO-style) rim can look very good if restored correctly.

The picture shows the a classic look RO-style fitted to my B, but missing the centre cap as this is the dirty-racer look I want on my GT, but with the centre cap it is equally as good looking. 

Many RO-styles are resprayed in plain silver which looks ok, but the extra attention to the black quadrants really sets it apart.  However, done wrong and it doesn't look as good.  

The problem with RO-styles is that they get scruffy very quickly, and rusting wheel nuts with rusting rims don't make for a nice finish.  What I have noticed on many cars is the that the centre cap often causes scratching of the rim at the centre and rust seems to start in this area very quickly.  In addition many owners fit trim rims to their Rostyles, which, in my humble opinion do not look as good, and the claws on these trims also exacerbate the rust problem, although the trim does hide it.  However, I had trims on my car when I bought it and soon lost one on a rail crossing.  So I opted to leave these off as they didn't fit with the theme of my GT anyway.

My first efforts at restoring the rims were done with the tyres still on the rims.  I first removed all the balance weights knowing that I was going to have the wheels rebalanced anyway.  I spent a lot of time with the Nitromors on both the outer and inner parts of the rim, and used Frost's POR15 black on the inside of the rim, and then sprayed the outer face in primer, followed by wheel silver from Halfords.  I then painstakingly hand painted in the black quadrants in gloss enamel, which reacted with the silver, meaning I had to use a plumbers' gas torch to heat bake the paint, and then apply a second coat of black to hide any silver tints in the black in the first coat.  Here's a picture of my then 4-yr old daughter helping me!

Once I finished the black, the entire outer face of the rim was sprayed with a clear-coat gloss finish, and new centre caps and wheel nuts were fitted.  They looked fantastic at first...

...but having attended a few shows and looked at a variety of RO-styles I knew that the gloss black was wrong, and, being picky for a minute, the edge of the black was too sharp, and not fuzzy enough as per the originals.

As my tyres were due replacing all round I decided the next best thing would be to get a set of rims with the tyres already removed.  Iain Cameron had managed to bag a bargain on Ebay of some restored RO-styles at about £25 and so consequently had a spare set of rims from which the tyres were already removed.  I bagged these and started working on stripping the paint back and wire brushing...

...and after two hours had this to show on one rim only - rust still very much evident in the pock marks etc.  I would recommend getting a spare set of rims to restore as you can take your time and keep your car on the road while the work is under way.  Rims can be got fairly cheaply in the classifieds or in some cases are given away!

So, all five rims were taken to a local bead blasting company in Flint.  I was quoted £15 approx per rims for the blasting and etch primer coat.  I really should have taken the rims to a tyre place first to check the trueness, but I got lucky on this occasion!  The rims were ready within a couple of days.  I could have had the rims powder coated silver which would have left me with just the black quadrants to finish, but the powder coating would have added another £12 per rim.  However, I went to Brown Brothers in Chester, and got two aerosol tins of trade wheel silver for less than £10 with plenty of paint, enough to do all five rims and then some.  I also got some clear-coat and a small tin of satin black.  

I also bought the plastic spray mask for the B's RO-style rim for about £10.  The MGOC do a masking kit using laser cut masks but this is a once-off use kit and the same price as the plastic mask, which can be used over and over.

I sprayed each rim with several coats of the silver, and when these had baked in the sun for an hour or so, the clear-coat was sprayed on.  Then, using the mask, which needed some finger pressure to keep it close to the wheel rim, I sprayed the satin black on over the clear-coat finish.  The mask is quite good, and although I had removed balance weights and the valves, the mask could still be used if these were in place although you would have to cut a hole for the valve.  The mask makes light work of the black quadrants and leaves a factory look fuzzy edge.  The satin black is also very much more factory look, and contrasts well against the glossier clear-coated silver.  The fitting of the 185/70 14 tyres also give the whole wheel a more beefier look in my opinion.

When I took the rims to be fitted with new tyres, I made very sure that the wheels were balanced on the four stud rather than the centre cone as I have read reports that the centre can be slightly out resulting in poor balancing.  Nowadays, for a clean look, glue on weights are possible inside the rim, but I stuck with the good old fashioned weight on the outside, where it is easier to check they haven't fallen off. 

I toyed with the idea of variations on the theme but in the end settled for the factory look but I have seen RO-styles done in a variety of ways including this one below.

Whilst I could have probably saved myself a lot of effort and just bought re-conditioned rims from the likes of the Welsh MG Centre for £40 each, I got a lot of satisfaction from doing this job myself.  The cost of bead blasting, the paint, and the mask (which I can use again in the future) came to about £10 less than just buying the reconditioned rims, and certainly less than a set of replica Minilites.  In addition, I now have a spare set of rims in the garage, and my aim is to restore these ready to be fitted with a fresh set of tyres in the future, and so on, on a rotational basis. 

In the meantime, I have been given a set of Mk1 steel rims (thanks to Greg Willars) that would normally have a chrome hub cap, but I am going to restore these rims to see if they give the right look sans the hubcaps instead of the RO-style!  It never ends...watch this space.

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