Refurb and scrap wheel.

[ambermarine]

About four years ago the opportunity came up to buy a wheel for my 98 lexus ls400. I did not need one at the time because I had just had the wheels on the car refurbed but it was priced ok  at £50 and had a tyre on.

It hung around my garage getting in the way for four years by which time the tyre had gone out of date so I cut it off and cleaned up the wheel which was not corroded anywhere.

Recently I checked my wheels on the car and discovered one had started bubbling on the face around the centre ,on further inspection it proved to be quite deep corrosion so I sprayed the cleaned up   wheel with the same paint code and stuck a new tyre on it and that is now on the car.

On further inspection of the offending wheel I found extensive corrosion on the inside rim in lots of areas , my conclusion was too much filler for the refurb was required so it was now scrap ,I took it to the scrap yard and they paid me £10 for the wheel. 

The wheels are still available for the 97-2000 LS400 at the princely sum of £700 per wheel,so the lesson to be learned here is have one more wheel for the road.

[Malc1]

Hi, had your wheels been professionally powder coated refurbd  ? And one of those had badly corroded ? 

Malc 

[ambermarine]

Yes a local firm had to do them three times before I was satisfied but to be fair they are all apart from the one that went bad ok.

I  have had a quote from wheel specialists for five  at a price of £550 with ceramic finish so I will have a look in the future but not needed now I have refurbed the £50 buy I made four year ago.

As a point of interest I was informed by a technichan in a Lexus dealership in the states some years ago that the reason Lexus Toyota wheels are vunerable to corrosion is they supply cars to predominatly southern hemisphere envIronments so the rust belt protection is not required in the majority of the wheels and the cost per wheel is less in manufacturing terms .

[Malc1]

Good luck with it all 

I had my Ls400 Mk3 wheels powder coated refurbd a couple of years ago now by a local coy …… £65 a wheel and whilst not guaranteed, an observation that they should last 15 years …… unless I whack them 👌

All’s good so far 🤞

Malc