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Mission creep:



Rusty's tires were all unable to hold air. That made loading and unloading the car a nightmare. And the car was unable to be moved from it's initial resting place. I need to be able to move the car so that I can pull the engine and trans before winter time.

What started as removing the wheels to have the old tires removed, morphed into "why not clean up the wheels while the tires are off?"



Then it was rust removal and paint prep



Primer, then sanding



Painted with Massey Ferguson Red. 8:2:1 was the ratio I started with. A painter friend of mine recommended doing more hardener for more gloss and a harder finish. That's what I did and it seemed to work well.



Wrapped with 235/75-15 Hankook Kinergy with thin white walls. They were about $90 on Amazon. I wasn't feeling straight black walls, and I certainly wasn't going to spend the money of wide whites. There were no used tires available that would fit, so new tires were what I had to do.



The tires on the Panama are 225/75-15 and they almost seem a little undersized to me. I wanted to try the 235's to see how they fit and looked. Now I have spare wheels and tires for both my car and my brother in law's '52. I'm cautiously optimistic that I can return Rusty to the road, though probably not with a full restoration.

-Kevin

Nice job, Kevin. Cleaning up the rims helps prevents flats from leaks. I have a new set of wheels from David Moe via Flackmaster being checked for cracks and “trueness”, sand blasted and powder coated this week. The holes in the rims had gotten too big for safety. Over 450,000 miles of pneumatic wrenches will do that. Hope they look as good as yours.