'67 Imperial wheelcover resto

detmatt · Jun 27, 2014

Otherwise known as 8 hours I'm not getting back...
one of the wheelcovers on my Imp was quite beat up and has always bugged me. Quite some time ago I bought a few wheelcovers from Newp.(where is Mike btw?) the 3 that he sent me are all pretty straight but ugly, dull, pitted and the paint is worn off but he gave me a good deal so...
I wanted to dismantle and clean all of them before Carlisle so I started with the fronts. One needed cleaned the other needed to be rebuilt with the doner parts. Over the next few posts I'll take you through the process. First off here's the fronts before.
The one that just needed the cleaning is in very good condition and the other as you can see by the pic is pretty bent up and the pot metal part is cracked in a couple of places.

detmatt · Jun 27, 2014

Here's what I had to work with from Mike.

detmatt · Jun 27, 2014

The first thing I figure out is that these covers are different than mine in that mine have a silver painted background behind the cast pot metal overlay and these were back painted black. Here's what that looked like.

detmatt · Jun 27, 2014

At this point I knew I'd opened up an all day can of worms. Scrubbed, sanded, cleaned and began masking off for this multi stage paint job. I had some silver argent leftover fro another project in a rattlecan, its not a perfect match but I'm happy with it overall and its hard to see the difference unless you are looking for it.

detmatt · Jun 27, 2014

Masked and primed, masked for silver and sprayed, then masked again for finish black. Here it is painted.

detmatt · Jun 27, 2014

Next I put back the eagle in the center and the Imperial inner ring after a good cleaning.

bajajoaquin · Jun 27, 2014

I've been considering this for a while now, especially since my covers are making racket. Thank you for posting this up. Do you have any details of assembly/disassembly or is it really straight forward?

I think my covers are black where yours are silver. Early/late year difference?

bajajoaquin · Jun 27, 2014

I should have checked here first:
http://imperialclub.org/Repair/Wheels/covers.htm

either I misremember my colors, or I have '68s on my car. I think it's late production, so I guess it's possible I have a switch-over or something.

detmatt · Jun 27, 2014

While the paint was drying on the one I took the cast overlay piece off the other one so I could scrub the silver paint underneath and clean the cast piece which was a real pain in the *** and took a solid hour just cleaning it. It looked great back on the car though. Also is a pic of one of the rears which I have yet to do.

detmatt · Jun 27, 2014

Since the cast piece was bent and cracked on the other I had to revive one from the doners and these were rough! I had some doubts that I was going to be able to get one of these to shine again.
these come apart very easy and self explanatory and all you need is a 1/4" drive with a 1/4" socket. The gold eagle has 4 tabs that bend to hold it on.