Capping it off: Restoration and completion of wheel center caps

Today was an exciting day in that we finished the wheel hub caps. Normally this would not be cause for celebration but it signals the end of a two year journey that began with the challenge to reproduce the long since unavailable wheel center caps. After many prototypes and an extreme amount of effort we are pleased to have manufactured the only 100% perfect wheel caps around. The good news for Dino owners is that we made some extras and will be offering them for sale in the near future so no one else needs to go through the work we endured to make these parts. Watch the blog in the next week or so for a full product announcement.

As for our wheel hub caps they needed a lot of work to get them right. Tiny dents were tapped out, scratches were polished away, and all of the exposed stainless steel was taken to the correct and original level of polish; not to shiny and not too dull. Afterwards the center flat section was carefully masked and prepped for the application of some semi-gloss black. The backside was not ignored as we sourced and installed correct manufacture decals with the last detail being the fitting of our freshly minted wheel caps.

Our Dino is intended to be a driver so we took the precaution to make a fifth and spare wheel center cap in the event that one is lost to a high speed chase but until then it will act as a shelf ornament to remind us of our efforts.

Picking our way forwards: Assembling the door locks

There are nut and bolt restorations and then there are nuts like us who insist on taking EVERYTHING as apart as possible to restore and detail even the tiniest of components. Our door locks are no exception as they were disassembled, the bodies were re-chromed, parts re-plated, and even the tiny spring loaded door that hides the key opening polished like new.

Once all the parts were clean and ready we had to go through the process of matching the internal tumblers to the keys. We are lucky to have both the original door and ignition keys with our car and ,with a little effort, we were able to re-assemble the lock as good as new.