They were in a bit of a state so I managed to pick them up pretty cheap for what they are. First of all the dishes needed major attention. I wanted them polished so got them sent off to be polished at £25 a dish which wasn't too bad!
From this:
To this:
Then it was time to sort the centres out. I wanted to keep the greyscale theme I already had going on with the Rota's, so decided to paint the centres white.
Initially I had a go at DIYing them with rattle cans:
I was actually really happy with the finish I got from rattle canning them, but when it came to lacquering them it reacted and ruined all my hard work :(.
Couldn't be bothered to start all over again so ended up getting them powdercoated instead. A good finish in the main:
While they were being powdercoated i did a rattle can job on the barrels in black like so:
Then once all that was done, it was time for the terrifying task of building them back up. The internet is a major scaremonger when it comes to building splits, I was certain that they would leak so resigned myself to that and got on with it as best I could.
The one thing I learnt during the build is that tigerseal is the MESSIEST stuff I have ever encountered. It gets everywhere, and doesn't come off your hands for days!
Didn't get many pictures of the build because of that, but here are a few rubbish phone snaps:
Left to cure:
Annnnndddd tyred:
Turns out that three out of the four hold air which isn't bad going for my first time building splits! The fourth has a really slow leak, dropping from 40psi to 20 over four days.
So in an attempt to stop the leak without rebuilding, my good friend tigerseal came back to help..
Enough?
The tyre goes back on at the end of the week so everything crossed. I really really don't want to have to rebuild it.
great finish!
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