How are your "Nuts"?
On your LE Wheels that is:D
I have been cleaning up my LE Alloys this weekend and the Black Nut's are letting them down a bit and I am not going to pay £14 each for new ones, I remembered this method from my school days & had a go for my self.
Get your Nuts & give them a good hard scrub with a wire brush.:o
Get an old Bake Bean tin and half fill with old or new engine oil.
A damp cloth as we expect an oil fire.
Long nosed pliers, and a gas blow torch that you use for paint striping.
Stand one nut on a flame proof surface and heat with the blow torch untill they are VERY hot.
Pick the nut up with the pliers and drop it into the tin of oil. The oil will smoke like a bonfire & properly burst into flames. If this happens place the damp cloth over the tin to extinguish the fire.
DO NOT use Water as this will cause the fire to go out of control or a Fire Extinguisher as this will blow the burning oil every where.
Leave the nut in the oil while you heat up another nut. When the other nut is ready remove the first nut from the tin using the pliers and place on a heat proof surface to cool down. Do Not pick it up for a long time with your hands as they are still very hot & are covered in boiling oil. Then repeat the process on the other nuts.
When the nuts are COOL, wipe the oil off with a rag and they will be nice & black again.
that's well worth knowng but just wish i needed black nuts 😮 😉
Perhaps galvanizing in black might be an option ?
This can be done not only in a kind op copper color but also in black,
here in Holland it will be charged per kilo of the delivered material, problem however is that the turnaround after delivery is about 7/10 days.
Doesn't heating up metal especially steel change its properties?
I would be worried about heating up wheelnuts in this way.
I thought about it & the blow lamp did not even get the nuts to glow, but hot enough to burn the oil as they were droped into the tin.
If they were going to fail it was on Tuesday when the car went in for its MOT & had new tyres fitted. It failed on the front wheel bearing and those wheels were on & off using that air gun 6 times during that process. If the nuts were going to be week & fail it would have expected it to be then.