Sidequest: Big, Shiney, Happy, Beauty Rings…and center caps.

So I grabbed the beauty rings off the Scout and brought them home for refurbishment. The outside of the rings were in pretty good shape. The biggest challenge I had was to blow the rust off the back of the rings and work them over with a wire brush. You can see how I handled the wire wheel because I don’t have a bench grinder. I may add one of those soon, but for now. I did a little jerry-rigging with some clamps to hold my drill.

I taped them up pretty well, put some paper to protect them from overspray, and hit the back sides with some etching primer. I gave about 10 minutes between each coat. My plan is to hit them with some primer black as well, but I may leave the green/gray color of the etching primer.

I decided to leave them the primer color. I applied four coats, so they should stick pretty well and protect from further rust IF I put them back on the Scout. If I don’t put them back on the rims, I will put them on my store for sale.

I think they turned out pretty nice! Of course, there is curb rash and a few dents on two of them, but for a 50+-year-old Scout II, it’s pretty good, all things considered.

American Racing Chrome Center Caps:

I had forgotten that my truck even had center caps. When I had the gentleman at the body shop, take the tires off so I could get new tires mounted. They asked what I wanted to do with them, so I decided to put some elbow grease into them and shine them up. It’s not a huge money saver, but nonetheless. Here you go.

I decided to follow the advice of my old pal Derek, who was cleaning up an old bumper, and he used SOS Pads with soap so I thought I would give it a whirl.

I cleaned them up, dried them off, and hit them with a little etching primer. That is good enough for me!!

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