Had this afternoon free so thought I'd start taking the wheels off to give the insides a good clean, polish and seal.
This is my first experience with centre lock wheels so didn't know what to expect in terms of the amount of force necessary to remove the knock off's. I'd already bought an aluminium socket tool thing and breaker bar for such a task.
My god!
I had to check several times that I was going in the right direction. It wouldn't budge. I ended up digging out the OEM spanner and hammer and after some quite brutal violence it gave way. Should it be that hard or had the dealer been over zealous last time the wheels came off?
Anyway, back to the point of the thread. Despite the low miles on the car, the inside of the wheel I removed (doing one at a time) was pretty grubby.
Some jet washing and elbow grease later and I was surprised and disappointed to find that the inside face of the wheel appeared to have been painted by Stevie Wonder with a rattle can who had then preceded to manhandle the wheel whilst the paint was still wet!
Not great.
I've got one of these wheels on order as a spare and been charged an arm and a leg for it. All I can say is that the finish is a damned site better than this or it will be going straight back...
