# Ronal SX Build



## 03_uni-B (Sep 6, 2005)

Wanted to show/document the Ronals I built

They started life 18x8.5 et50 5x120.65. Bought them from a friend, had never been mounted and had a build date of 2003 on them.



First off I went to Sears and bought 2 new bits, wanted to have dedicated tools for the hardware.



I knew I wanted to make them staggered. So with a bit of math I figured out what I wanted. I like to use this wheel offset calculator




So as you can see I added the original specs of the wheels I wanted to change. 18x8.5 et55. What I wanted to do was add a 1" larger rear lip and make sure I could still achieve the final offsets I wanted with at least the smallest adapters they will make (15mm).

Adding 1" to the 1.5" existing lip gives me 18x9.5 et37. With a 15mm adapter that gave me et22. 

So I gave Rotiform a call to order some 2.5" lips. Had to provide face hole diameter, face diameter and a few other measurements I can't recall. 

In the meantime while I was waiting for the lips to arrive I proceeded to dismantle the wheels. 



Got them split. 



One trick to share, these are "face mount" so the lips and barrels were basically glued together with the sealant. To split them, i ran a razorblade through the sealant, then used a piece of 2x4 and a hammer going around the wheel to work the lip and barrel apart. 

At this part I had 2 lips I needed to strip to get ready for polish. I used Aircraft stripper



for these results



Headed to a buddies to polish those up. Here is the comparison of finished vs a lip after 800 grit iirc.



I do not have any pictures of this process, but you want to be sure that you clean ALL of the old sealant off or you will have a hard time getting the wheels sealed. I used a razor blade to get the majority of it off. Then bough brass wire wheels for my drill. You want to get brass because it is a softer metal than the barrel and lip. That will keep from damaging them.

I got bored while waiting for the new lips so I stuck two barrels together for a reverse lip 14" wide Ronal.



The **** you do when you're bored....I know. 

Lips finally arrived from Rotiform and I couldn't wait to see what they looked like. For comparison you can see the 1.5" lips and face in the back of the picture. 



Mock up



Then I started assembling them.



You want to work in a crisscross pattern, similar to tightening the lugs when mounting the wheel. These were M8 bolts iirc so I went with 18ftlbs and a dab of lock tight on each one. 

Was a slow process with 40 per wheel



But eventually got them all done.



Next up was sealing. I used black RTV, was recommended by multiple people and was very similar to the sealant I removed from the original wheels. Being slightly OCD I didn't want to just slap on the sealant and hope it worked, so I used some painters tape to give me a good uniform bead. 

Here you can see a during/after of the tape.


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## 03_uni-B (Sep 6, 2005)

Got the adapters slightly after, and couldn't wait to test fit. 









Guess it was time for some tires. Went with 205/40 for the front and 215/40.

This is one of the rears



Got them all cleaned up and ready to mount.



rear



front, my buddy's harli in the back



And a couple on the ground shots. Overall was pretty happy with where everything ended up.


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## DUTCHswift (Feb 22, 2012)

:beer:


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