One of the things I’ve long debated on for Diamond was what wheels to get, and I spent countless hours browsing websites and looking at pictures of C-bodies on forums. I knew I wanted to get larger wheels so that someday I can do a disc brake conversion (you can’t properly do a conversion with the stock 14-inch wheels), but I didn’t know how big I wanted to go.
At some point late last year, I decided on grabbing five 15-inch Chrysler cop wheels that my father had stashed away. And so while I was home for Thanksgiving, I picked them up and brought them home.
Before with the stock 14-inch wheels.
Three of the wheels were in decent shape, though they all had a bit of surface rust and some imperfections around the surface that I could just attribute to age and being used. One was bent badly in one spot of the rim — which I tried to repair, but it proved to be difficult because of the size and complexity of the bend — and another wheel somehow had bad curb rash all around the rim. That’s the one I ended up fixing with a grinding wheel and a flap disc on the angle grinder.
I tried all sorts of things to strip the wheels, and in hindsight, it would’ve been easier to just take them to a shop for blasting or using caustic aircraft-grade paint stripper. I tried blasting with two different blast medias, but both took so long to get any good progress. I threw a wire cup brush on the angle grinder and used that at one point, but I got tired of getting stabbed a million times by the little wires and then finding them in my clothes and around the house for a week later. I also tried letting the wheels soak with some EasyOff for a day; this worked a tiny bit after using the 0% nozzle on the pressure washer to wash it off, but not enough.
Finally, I found some paint/rust stripping grinder wheels, which worked the best out of all of the methods, but they couldn’t reach the nooks and crannies of the wheels and wore through really fast. After I got as much off as I could, I went back to the wire cup brush to get the rest of the bits off. The stripping process took months to do, off and on. That’s also partially due to rainy weather, hot and humid weather, life, and my full-time job getting in the way of things. But oh well.
Next up, I hit the wheels with some self-etching primer, then filler primer. With the filler primer, I flooded some of the spots that had deeper imperfections, knowing that I was going to sand the wheels anyway. After everything looked good enough for paint, I got the air hose to blow out most of the primer dust and ran a tack cloth over them to clean off the rest.
I then hit them with black wheel paint, which actually created a more textured surface than I’d like. So, I sanded the faces down with fine-grit sandpaper (400 for the “bad” stuff, then 600, 800, and finally 1,500 grit) to smooth them out and fix some runs in the paint before using the tack cloth on them again and spraying on a couple of coats of gloss clear.
Pro tip: Harbor Freight’s tack cloths are better than the Bondo brand ones. When you cut the Bondo brand tack cloths into pieces (I cut each cloth into four pieces — one for each wheel), the edges of the cloth fray and leave bits and pieces everywhere. Harbor Freight’s tack cloths don’t do that. And they’re cheaper.
When all was dry a couple of days later, I made the trek over to the tire shop to get the wheels and new tires installed. I went with Cooper Cobra Radial GTs, P235/70-R15. These were the tires that were on her when we got her, and I prefer the white lettering on the sidewalls. After getting back home, I put on the NOS Chrysler center caps that I bought at the Chrysler swap meet in Indianapolis in February, and all was finally completed.
I'm really happy with how these wheels turned out, especially after all the time I spent refurbishing them. I love this look on Diamond, and I think it adds to her sort of hot rod appeal.
Featured Tools and Parts
(Some links may be affiliate links, which means I will earn a commission if you purchase a product at no extra cost to you.)
- Paint and Rust Stripping Wheel
- Paint and Rust Stripping Wheels (4-pack)
- Bauer Wire Cup Brush
- Bauer Grinding Wheel
- Warrior 80-grit Flap Disc
- Rust-Oleum Comfort Grip
- Rust-Oleum Self-Etching Primer
- Rust-Oleum Filler Primer
- Rust-Oleum Wheel Paint
- Rust-Oleum Clear
- Tack Cloths
- Cooper Cobra Radial GT Tires