Workshop Innovations

[Phil Waterman]

Originally posted by Grant Bowker
As part of the process of cleaning up rims for fitting tires Rob created his elastic suspension system. Even lightweight (racing special eqipment????) HUP rims get tiring after a while.

Grant here is my solution to that problem.

Here is the rig I use to wire brush rims, paint them on and then to clean and trim the bead lip so that they can be mounted. It very simply is a large lazy-susan large plywood work surface bolted to the top which allows centering blocks to be screwed to it. It is useful for a lot of things as it will hold and allow rotation of large objects. In the top image you can see a 20” rim being painted with POR15 being able to turn the rim while painting works great for roller application as with the POR15 or with a spray-gun the results are usually very even and complete coverage. Its biggest use though is in clean rims by centering the rim with blocks and using a steady rest a disk sander or air grinder with abrasive wheel can be used to clean, sand, smooth the rims. By controlling the angle of your disk grinder you can get the rim to rotate slowly on the lazy-susan. (Of course you have to be careful not to let the rim spin to fast 50-60lbs of rim is mean when it gets up off the lazy-susan and heads across the shop)

I have also used a sandblaster on rims on the lazy-susan, though you have to be careful to keep the abrasive out of the roller unit.

In the lower image you can just see the roller units between the table top and the lower mounting unit. The roller unit is a heavy-duty cabinet unit.