Rubber hits the road.

I had taken the wheels off a while back and now it was time to get the brakes back, swivels and hubs up to snuff. The wheels also went back on the road to begin their makeover.

Drive flanges were stripped back and zinc primed before being undercoat in white.

I didn’t actually need to take the hubs off to paint them as I had not long since rebuilt them, but I thought it was easier to do so. It made life easier and i found that one seal must have been slightly out of square as the shoulder holding the spring in place had worn off. I have these in stock as spares so easy enough to do. Once stripped they were red oxide primed and place in the correct orientation with my high-tech arrow to remind me!

Once primed the drums went down the chassis paint line whilst I undercoated the hubs in white before they and the drive flanges joined the ever increasing number of yellow bits.

I had also cleaned and spray painted the wheel nuts and drive flange bolts / spring washers. Hammerite seems to work ok for this, and I went for black as I can see that they were either green, black or yellow until some one had fairly recently put a bit of nail varnish on.

With the hubs now ready to accept the wheels, I turn to their journey. I am sure that they are the original wheels as they appear to have only been white and very badly painted in NATO IR Green. They are NRC 7578 FV 2000727, which is absolutely fine but these are clearly later second hand replacements for what I guess were 5in rims.

I got the tyres / tubes and weights taken off by a local fitter pretty cheaply and then gave them a good look over. One had a pretty noticeable (less so after finessing!) dent in rim edge (top of pile in below pic) so this will be the spare.

Despite the corrosion inside the rim, particularly under the tube near the valve stem hole, they came up a treat with the shot blast. It wasn’t expensive and saved a huge amount of time.

I got the read oxide primer on pretty sharpish as they, like all Land Rover parts, are looking for the next way to rust. This propensity is much like that of sheep to find ways to die and so I then gave them a white coat.