Expedition Poseur

John likes to accuse everybody else of being a poseur. We've already gone over a few reasons why he himself is a big expedition poseur, but here's one more. John just had to have his wheels painted white to match his truck. It's a nice look, I have to admit. But as always, he takes it to extremes. It couldn't be just any white, it had to be the perfect white. He previously had his wheels painted white, but it was not the correct Land Rover Alpine White.

Let's just let John tell us all about his wheels:

Wheels came back from Auto Bahn today:



They did a really nice job. The color is actually Alpine White and the outside is clear coated. Nice and glossy. My ANR1534's were rattle-canned since day one, and the paint was dull and not Alpine White. So it'll be sweet having glossy Alpine White rims for once. Damn, somebody's going Uptown.

I also got my new lug nuts plated with black zinc:



These are the pre-1998 Disco1 steel spare wheel lug nuts. I think the part no. on these is ANR3116. They have an integral flange so that use of the impact wrench on the lug nuts doesn't give the wheels a black eye around the lug nuts. I hate that; It looks so sloppy. The impact socket bottoms on the flange instead of the wheel itself with these lug nuts.

The ANR3116 lug nuts come from LR plated in silver zinc. I wanted the lug nuts black so that they would look as close as possible to the RRD500010 lug nuts. So I had them plated with black zinc at Aerodynamic Plating, a local plating shop. They did a superb job as well. I'm very pleased.

I'm stoked but I'm actually a little pissed as well. The rims came out so nice that now I have to find a decent tire mounting shop that won't treat these rims like Econoline wheels. I'm going to drive around Torrance tonight and see if I can find one of the Antera/DUB/pimp wheel shops. Hopefully one of them has a kick ass Snap-on tire mounting machine that doesn't mangle the rims. I realize the rims will get trashed on the trail eventually, but it's one thing to suffer damage on the trail and quite another to get the rims mangled during tire mounting. The latter just hurts.

We'll see what happens.

The new shoes are on:



There's an America's Tire less a mile from the shop, so I took the tires there first out of convenience. I'm glad I did. They did a superb job. The tire guy there even changed out the tire machine's plastic jaw to fit the flange shape on the ANR4636's. He was really careful the entire time, even though he had to use a combination of tire irons and the tire machine to get the tires mounted. Not a scratch on the delicate white paint. Also, they charged only $10 per tire. Quite the bargain. I felt bad so I tipped the guy a $20 for the extra care he took with my new rims.

I'm going to shed a tear when these wheels get mangled on the trail. Tito, get me some tissue.

Now, does sound to you like somebody who takes his truck on expeditions? You can just imagine him ripping out a valve stem on the trail, and having to use manual tire irons to get the tire off the rim. Well, we didn't have to wait long for John to tell us how he feels about taking his pretty white truck off road:

Next month? Sorry guys I'm definitely out for that trip. There's no way I'm putting these new wheels at risk.