DIY refurb on Diamond cut rotors

Evening All,

Been on the list of jobs to do for a while now, due to stone chips in the lacquer my rotors have suffered badly through the winter from alloy corrosion and as a result looked awful.

Rather than pay someone else I thought id have a go myself, having access to a large lathe and a colleague who is a machinist helped

Pic of what the wheels looked like before, during machining, after machining, applying lacquer and ready to re fit.

We made a boss and drilled the same PCD as the wheel with a machined spigot, this was welded to a pipe and machined true, this enabled us to hold the wheels in the lathe.

Once in the lathe we made 3 cuts across the face of 0.1mm, adjusting the feed rate of the tool to achieve the desired finish and get the diamond cut look, this is also important to give the lacquer something to bond to.

Next up wheels were cleaned thoroughly, scuffed down and masked up ready for lacquer, 3 coats of 2k clear wee added and left to dry for 24 hours at 20 degrees C

Wheels were then coated with G Techniq C5 before being re fitted to the car

I didn't re paint the inner sections of the wheel or behind the spokes as these where ok, this was purely to smarten up the diamond cut face and re lacquer

Not bad for a few evenings work and £40 in materials.

Thought I would share in case any one else was thinking of doing the same after the winter has taken its toll

no_idea said:

Looks like a good job, very satisfying too.
Did you cut from the inside out so you didn't push a burr up?
That is one thing that annoys me when wheels get re-cut and they don't de-burr the trailing edge. When they are lacquered you can still see it.

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Yes, we cut from the inside out, once finished on the face we then re instated the small chamfer on the outer edge

Marky007 said:

Wow look great mine look terrible aswell but dont have the facility to repair them myself.

Great job

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Thanks, I have seen videos of them being polished out by hand but that must take ages and the finish would never be as good!

Having access to a large lathe helped once the boss was made to hold the wheels and everything was set up the machining only takes a few minutes per wheel, the labour intensive bit was cleaning, masking and applying the lacquer