Clear Coating The Bowling Ball Hubcaps

Here is the difference between one hubcap that has been given the clear coat VS the one that has not (right). As you can see the one on the left has much more gloss and reflects light way better. Four more to go like this and then the Hubcaps are totally done.

Finishing the Bowling Ball Hub Caps

I finally finished off the Bowling Ball hub caps last night. All they need now is the clear coat which should go on pretty easy.

I was thinking more last night about getting these caps to fit after market rims or rims other than the Turbo cast rims that originally would have been on the 1982 Trans Am Firebird. I noticed that a lot of people in the Knight Rider community seem to use Zip Ties to hold their rims on. I have not seen any examples of how this is done but last night I had a thought about possibly creating some kind of adapter that would use Velcro to hold the hub caps in place, my thought was that if this could be done right it would hold the hub caps on quite securely even better than the tabs that originally hold the caps in place on the Turbo Cast rims. The Velcro would also make taking the caps off a lot less of a chore VS the zip ties I hear of so often. I'm pretty inventive so I'll put my inventors thinking cap on and see what I can come up with in this department.

As you can see from the photo on the right that from the day the Bowling Ball hub caps arrived from eBay to how they are now (Top Left) that they are looking much better now that they have had the centre logos removed and have all been sanded and refinished. Once the clear coat is on they will look even better.

Painting Hubcaps

I started priming the odd one out Bowling Ball hubcap. I can see a lot better after applying the first coat of sandable primer where I have a few areas that need some additional sanding. A little more work and this one will be ready for paint.

After another going over with the scuff pad and then re priming you can see all of the minor surface scratches have been eliminated. The only area of difficulty is the centre indentation where the logo used to be, it's kind of tricky getting the scuff pad into the trouble area without effecting the surrounding areas too much, but it's getting closer to the painting stage.

I put the first coat of paint on the odd one out hub cap and now it looks better that the other 4, not to worry, they will get the same treatment and be looking just as good. With this first coat of paint I can see I will need to wet fine sand paper a few small areas before giving it perhaps a few more coats of paint.

Removing Logos From Hubcaps

I removed the logos from the centre of each of the Bowling Ball hub caps gently with an sharp hobby knife, then scrubbed off any glue residue with a little Goofoff, then washed each hub cap. Now they are ready to be sanded, primed and repainted. I'm still not sure if they will fit the after market rims I have, it's kind of hard to tell just by looking at them. Like I say maybe there is some kind adapter out there, don't know??