I'm rather chuffed with myself.

The Acadiane's spare was a rather cracked but original Mitchelin 125 section tyre, also the paint was rather dubious on the rim too.

Enter eBay for a specific 15" portable bead breaker (after the vice failed to do the task), and off the old tyre came.

After much application of wire brush in the drill we were down to bare metal and time to apply some paint.

Enter the Earlex hoover powered spay kit (apologies for the picture quality it's off my phone)



Etch primer and white filler primer later, it's time to apply the silver..........7 coats later it still doesn't look silver to me but I'm bored applying coats now so stuff it and get the job finished.

One new valve (38p - bargain) and it's time to gird one's loins and apply tyre levers. With the paint being very new and soft I put the wheel on multiple layers of polythene sheet with an old towel underneath to make sure the finish wasn't damaged.

This is the time when proper tyre soap and 2 foot tyre levers are handy, with the beads well soaped inside and out and judicious use of the big levers, lo and behold the tyre popped over the rim - nobody could have been more surprised than me.

Firing up the Aldi 'oilless' compressor I remove the valve core and connect the inflator; this is the part when it either works or you resort to a can of Easystart and a blowlamp to get the beads seated on the rim.

Blow me down but the tyre pops on at the first attempt and at 40 PSI to boot - I have seen over 70 on motorcycle tyres before that satisfying pop!

Bingo Bongo, I have a spare wheel again:



Now this may seem mundane to some but this is the first car tyre I have fitted.

Looks great to me,,,,, In my imagination I can see a little silver color in it!!

Never buy 'ready to use' cellulose paint, it's like water with little solids, hardly worth the effort to spray the stuff

The road wheels are getting a coat of dimpled Hammerite applied with a roller

Well following the refurb of the spare wheel and fitting my own tyres it was time to replace the rather dodgy cracked tyres on the rest of the road wheels.

First I had to modify my bead breaker so it will fit over the domed bits on the front of the wheels, apply angle grinder and a bit of bending and the holding arm now looks like this:



At least now it doesn't pop off the rim each time you use it.

And on with the new Toyo's.

Just to prove the old adage "There's always one", when I popped off the last tyre the rim turns out to be scrap, the tyre takes a fair amount of rim material with it (former steel, now flakey rust).

So the Acadiane has to wear the newly refurbed spare 'till ECAS can deliver a new rim, and I'm without a spare again.



Still, at least the car's wearing new boots at each corner, how the old cracked ones were holding air is some sort of miracle.

how does your fresh air vent work with the 2cv front end?

''how the old cracked ones were holding air is some sort of miracle.''

unlike mine this morning..

it might be that the tyers ok, the hubs rust out inside

How does the fresh air vent work?

Well I wind down the window..........

Awesome job, looks great....I refurbed a set of wheels with a cheap (very cheap) aldi, electric hvlp fence sprayer....using diluted smooth hamerite....and that worked great too and gave a lovely gloss finish....it's amazing how wheels make a difference to the look of the car.....

Yeah, they look silly without them!