Eastwood Diamond Clear on Wheel Hubs

I'm attempting to save some cash on my wheels for my CB175.

I love the dull clean look of glass bead blasted parts and as an alternative to powdercoating my wheels, I was thinking about blasting my hub outer surfaces and then coating with this stuff:

http://www.eastwood.com/ew-diamond-clear-gloss-bare-metal-aero-11-oz.html

Does anyone have any experience with this spray? It seems like it's solid for bare metal and preserves the surface from rust and buildup.

My experience has been that a nice glass bead blasted aluminum part is not dull but a shiny, sparkly bright finish. Any type of clear coat over it will cause the light reflection to change and will just make it gray and dull looking, losing all the cool effect of the bead blasting.
It is transparent and glossy. It does cause the light to reflect off the many surfaces of the blasted part differently so it turns it to a dark gray without all the sparkly effect.

Yeah I know what you mean. My hubs now have that old patina on them (which I like) and is semi shiny as it is but blasting by comparison is dull looking. But compared to a dirty hub blasting is nice and shiny!

I would have thought the clear would provide shine, not dull it further. The pics on the website had polish preservation applications so I was hoping it would be pretty much a transparent protective coating...

Good insights, thanks.

So if I just blast it and leave it, am I asking for trouble when it comes to rust and dirt accumulation on the rough surface?

Blast it and spray it, if you dont like it you can always blast again ;D

1sttimer said:

So if I just blast it and leave it, am I asking for trouble when it comes to rust and dirt accumulation on the rough surface?

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The bead blasted surface has thousands of facets that reflect light and make it sparkly. Putting on the clearcoat diffuses this reflection so it just turns it dark gray and glossy. Blasted aluminum looks cool but is hard to maintain. Steel parts blasted and left uncoated will promptly rust

Ok I see. My original plan was to have them powder coated and I hate to spend 180 bucks to have them blasted and coated. I have been meaning to ask if they will cut costs if I provide them blasted already since I have access to that.

1sttimer said:

Ok I see. My original plan was to have them powder coated and I hate to spend 180 bucks to have them blasted and coated. I have been meaning to ask if they will cut costs if I provide them blasted already since I have access to that.

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A quality shop will tell you no. If I am going to guarantee my work then I will provide the whole process from start to finish to make sure everything is done correctly. I don't know how many people handled the part after blasting putting finger print oil all over the part that could contaminate the finish. The customer will lie to you and tell you when you ask if anyone handled them that they got put right into a plastic bag after blasting. In reality your friends thought the parts looked so cool blasted that they passed it around to everybody in the room. When the powder starts to lift up the road from this contamination and your friends ask what happened, here's the only 2 answers the customer can come up with. #1_ I paid a lot of money to have these parts coated and that asshole coater didn't know WTF he was doing and now I want my money back, don't go to him. Or #2_ I was a dumbass and didn't do what I was advised by the coater and he knew exactly what he was talking about but I wanted to save a buck. My money says #2 is never uttered.
Most shops will be appreciative that you took the time to blast it but we will blast it again and charge you the regular price. I'm not the cheapest coater in town because I don't cut corners so I don't cut pricing.

Ah well that's cool. I completely understand that side of it though I didn't think of that to begin with. I want this thing to be a daily driver so I'm planning on handing everything over to be coated, as expensive as it may be - though deep down I want to save some cash. The reward in durability will be worth it I'm sure.

From your comment I assume you PC personally for a business. I was quoted $270 for disassembled rims (they called them barrels) and 4 hub components. Does this seem like a fair price?

1sttimer said:

From your comment I assume you PC personally for a business. I was quoted $270 for disassembled rims (they called them barrels) and 4 hub components. Does this seem like a fair price?

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I do own a custom powder coating shop (Creative Candy Powder Coating, sorry, my website is in host transition and down). What "hub components" do you mean? I get $40 for a hoop (rim, barrel,etc), $25-$45 for hubs. Brake backing plates are $30. So I would come in around $180. I don't think $270 is a fair price and I'm not by any means the cheapest shop in the area.

another option would be to use bead blasted alum powder... we shoot this all the time! has a much cleaner look, and would ensure that all your parts have a uniform finish to them (the finish after blasting will change depending on the metal you are shooting and can become a nightmare if the chrome is bad) this would ensure a clean uniform finish and allow you the option to add additional accents to the rest of the bike... here are some samples... i would completely agree with 01marc that just blasting and clearing them is going to be a completely different look than you are expecting... it looks like a basic bland silver
hope these samples help explain what i am talking about.

with clear on left, without clear on right (does not require a clear we just shoot a few samples for our wall)




here is a shot from the top after we coated red/black/polished.. yoiu can see it really makes the accent pop on top


and so you can see what it looks like next tot he actual blasted surfaces


here is the same color but two toned with gloss black and then cleared, LOVE how these wheels came out





another option is to do someting custom... her is a color we created for a customer simply by changin the base and top coat

hand fabricated this resivor as well in house i will add

JRK,

That wheel, is rather sexy.

Holy cow, that's some good looking stuff. Well, in effort to not have to remove my cush drive on the rear wheel for PC, I went in search of the best possible rattle can paint I could find. I have tried VHT wrinkle, grill paint, Duplicolor Caliper paint, all in black. Every one of these attempts was immediately followed by a douse of aircraft stripper and another brand was tried. I could stand the look of any of them. Finally from a local guy in town I found the perfect cocktail.

I had been using Acetone for surface prep and he recommended Xylol (Xylene). It dries a little slower than Acetone but boy does it clean! I then followed it up with 2 dust coats of VHT epoxy paint and then 2 wet coats. It's still curing but it looks amazing and is dry to the touch.

Thanks guys.