So much for the "routine" 5 minute HUP wheel derimming...This weekend I attempted to derim one of two remaining serviceable HUP wheels - both came with the Prototype HUP.
5 minutes turned into almost 5 hours. The chisel and punch technique refused to work. The sledgehammer technique was equally frustrating. Soaking the gap between the rim and the casing with gasoline failed to produce any noticable results. Kharma, it seems favours the modest. Grant's smile said it all. After soothing my hurt pride, I found out why the tire refused to derim in the same manner as all of the others. It was a runflat tire with a hell of a lot more surface area at the bead. We resorted to Bob's wood splitter to break the bead and finally the inner rim separated from the tire.
The run flat - one tough SOB to derim:
In the meanwhile, Grant took on the chore of sandblasting (using quartz as the media) his rims and some of Bob's sheet metal. Here he is expelling noxious emissions:
I took a break from the rim bashing to blast the already separated HUP rims. It was fun in comparison to tire bashing.Paint soon followed.
HUP solar collector:
Bob and Grant also replaced U joints for their drive shafts. Bob sprays his short drive shaft:
It was a warm and sunny day with just a hint of a breeze - which kept the sandblasting dust away from the barn. The late summer weather has been great for the past week with more of the same coming this week. After some time remediating Bob's drive train issues, we enjoyed a cold beer before closing up shop and spoke of an upcoming road trip - details to be announced...