Does anyone have some pics of LE wheels and then of regular SA wheels?

I pulled some wheels off of a black SA, and they look a tiny bit different than the other SA wheels I have. More 'flowy' if you catch my drift.

Thanks,
Jay

 

83' Limited Edition wheels

 

79 LE Wheels.

 

here's the original SA wheels-


and here's the 79 LE wheels





LE wheels look a lot better IMO

 

I love my SA wheels, but they are a pain in the *** to clean. All those little right angles are impossible to get into. I wish I had the LE wheels.

 

Not only can I hook you up with LE wheels I can hook you up with an LE.

http://www.matthewnanney.com/1979LE.htm

Needs some work.

 

Au contraire, mon ami! The waffle-wheels are unpainted cast aluminum, so you can use Eagle1 brand "etching mag wheel cleaner" to make them look like new, whereas the '83 LE wheels are painted so you don't have that option.

 

Can you do that on the 79 LE wheels? This the best of my 4 (well, 5) LE wheels

 

I think the originally the SA wheels were painted a silver color originally ( on the waffle area ) with the center caps having a black background with a shiny thin circle around the mazda word in shiny polished al. I would love to verify this. i have a new wheel that I got from a filling station when they broke one of my wheels mounting snow tires back in the eighties and they got it new from a dealer. So I'm thinking its the original way they looked and it has silver paint on the waffle area and a clear coat over everthing.

I'll have to get a picture to show it. I've looked in every book I could find and can't tell what the wheels looked like new. I got my car in 83 when it was 3 years old but I don't remember if they were painted or not.

 

This wheel looked about like that one before I cleaned it with the product I mentioned.



Note that it stripped a bit of the paint off the center cap, if I did it again, I'd remove the cap first.

 

are the center caps supposed to be black? when i got mine, there was a little bit of paint of paint on them, so I repainted them. But i've never seen them black.

 

Yes, the background is supposed to be a satin black ( like the window trim ) and the highlights are polished aluminum (sp?). So theres a light polished circle around the inside edge and a polished and raised "mazda" in the center. That part I'm sure of.

 

That's excellent. Is there any trick to the application or should the directions be on there.

Thanks!

Oh, and any suggestions on how to take off calcium buildup? One of my tires is gross and all white and splotchy from oxidation/calcium

 

Oh, and your post gives the answer. Only LEs were black.

 

Mine. With SE center caps.
**** that plastic ****.

 

So do the regular SA wheels have any sort of clear coat on them or anything that requires special care? I usually just clean mine with regular car wash soap with either a tooth bruch (takes forEVER) or just using my fingers (still takes along time). Does anyone make some sort of brake dust sheild that I could use on the front? When I cleaned my wheels this weekend, the fronts looked like they were almost gunmetal, but the backs were almost perfectly clean thanks to the drums.

 

The SA wheels are just bare cast aluminum. Read my previous post about using Eagle1 "etching mag wheel cleaner" to clean this type of wheel.

 

Such a shameless plug. Lol.

 

Are you positive they were bare aluminum originally ? I haven't been able to verify this one way or the other yet ( of course I haven't pursued it very hard to date). Its that new wheel I got back in 87 or so that has the paint and clear coat on it that keeps me wondering. BTW, it looks sweet with the paint and clear coat, even better than the bare aluminum.

Either way the etching stuff looks like it does a great job. Does it harm the polished areas al all ? I'm thinking of the chrome necks aournd the bolt holes and the polished lip on the wheels.

 

It may haze up the lip a little bit, but that's easily remedied with a rag and a little Simichrome polish.

I've never seen an SA wheel that had any clearcoated finish, but I suppose there could be wheels out there with an owner-applied clear finish? Just a thought.

Then of course there are the gold-centered waffle wheels from the '80 "Leather Sport".
I'm not sure how the gold finish is achieved as I've never checked one out close-up.
They're pretty dang rare, though.

I've got a brand-new, never-mounted SA wheel carrying the ORIGINAL spare tire from 1980.
I'll take a pic later and post it up here. 'Tis a thing of beauty, indeed.

 

Thank you, I Try.

 

Yay! I have LE wheels. Joy for me

 

Heres a good picture of an SA wheel. Notice the center cap is black. Still can't decide if the waffle area is painted grey and what color it is but it doesn't look like bare aluminum. Found this on ebay of all places.



BTW, used the Eagle 1 Aluminum wheel etching on my SA wheels and it definitely cleaned them up real nice. Its a good product to use as part of prepping alu. wheels that you want to paint, it really stripped off a lot of dirt and gunk.

 

its bare aluminum cast wheels to clean mine after sitting since 87 in tall grass andmud i glass bead blasted them and they look good enough to me sorry no pics dont have my car at the moment but to clean them i used mean green works good

 

I have a nice set of 4 '83 LE wheels for sale $160 shipped....