Repairing and refinishing car wheels is usually a behind-the-scenes job. At local specialist company WheelKraft NW, the staff usually work at the company’s Hazel Dell garage or out of the back of one of the company’s mobile service trucks.
But later this month, WheelKraft’s refinishing process will be one of the main attractions at the Portland International Auto Show, giving guests a firsthand look at the many steps needed to transform a set of factory-standard wheels into a unique and customized set.
WheelKraft has operated a booth at the auto show for the past five years, but this year they’ll be taking things to a new level by joining the team at The Garage, a show exhibit that recreates a fully equipped and full-scale auto garage on the ground floor of the Oregon Convention Center. The show runs Jan. 24-27.
Inside The Garage, crews from several car customization companies such as PDX Wraps and Stereo King will team up to completely redesign and refinish three cars over the course of the four-day show. WheelKraft’s team will handle the wheel refinishing on the three cars: a Honda Ridgeline, a Subaru STI and a Ford Mustang.
Each set of wheels will need to blend in with the rest of the car package, but it’s not as simple as just picking a color, because each of the tricked-out cars at the end of the process will have a specific theme, such as a rugged and outdoorsy look for the Honda.
“(The Subaru) is going to look like a World War II fighter plane of some sort,” says WheelKraft owner and president Pat Heffron.
The Garage and the cars are funded and supplied by local dealers, who plan to show and sell the cars back at their dealerships — although if last year’s inaugural Garage program is any indication, the cars might not make it that far.
“The Toyota they did last year, they sold that car before it was even complete,” Heffron says.
Heffron says he plans to donate part of the proceeds from WheelKraft’s Garage participation to help the Troops Triumph Ski Day at Timberline lodge, which gives disabled veterans an opportunity to ski using adaptive equipment. Heffron also works as a ski instructor, and for the past 15 years has been teaching adaptive skiing for skiers with disabilities.
Refinishing
WheelKraft NW employs 20 staff and operates a fleet of 10 trucks, each of which is equipped with all of the necessary tools to do simpler repairs on site at the customer’s location, such as a sander and an air compressor.
The trucks can be sent to people’s houses for individual jobs, but Heffron says the most common customers are auto dealerships, who will often have a lineup a dozen or more wheels to be repaired when the truck arrives.
“We’ll do in excess of 120 vehicles a day out in the field,” general manager Pat O’Brien says.
Sometimes the repairs or color requests go beyond what a truck is equipped to handle, and those orders end up in Wheelkraft’s main garage in Hazel Dell. When vehicles come in the door, they’re tagged and processed, and then the wheels are removed and taken to be cleaned, marked for specific projects, then prepped and sandblasted before the new finish is applied.
“Most of the stuff is either painted or powder coated,” Heffron says.
Between a third and one half of the wheels also receive a machine finish, and then they’re cleaned again before being sent through an oven that will bake out any imperfections in the finish. Next up is a clear coat followed by one more pass through the oven, and then the technicians remount and rebalance the tires on the vehicle.
The most popular color by far is black, Heffron says, but it’s also fairly common for the wheels to be repainted to match the color of the car — and the shop has a large array of colors to match most car colors.
Sometimes customers come in for repairs, but end up choosing to add in a new color job when they find out that the wheel would need to be repainted anyway as part of the refinishing process.
“Next thing you know, they’re rolling out of here with something different,” O’Brien says.
Others come in wanting to recolor or redesign their wheels, but don’t know exactly what they’re looking for — and that’s where Heffron says he has the most fun, going back to the factory specifications for the wheels and figuring out all of the possibilities.
O’Brien and Heffron estimate that at least 85 percent of their individual retail customers end up opting for some sort of color modification, while the commercial customers tend to stick more to just the repairs, to get their cars back out onto the lots.
WheelKraft
Heffron started the WheelKraft NW business in October 2001, after previously operating a local Chem-Dry carpet cleaning franchise.
“I just started it as something to do after I sold my last company, and it turned into this,” he says.
The work brought together two of his longtime interests: art and cars. Heffron majored in art and has a background in 3D design, but he also describes himself as a lifelong car enthusiast, dating back to when he was a kid and his father was a member of a club that restored vintage cars.
“We always had an old car in the driveway,” he says. “I’ve been a car and motorcycle guy since I can remember.”
The business was completely mobile at the start, operating out of a single pickup truck that Heffron adapted to carry the necessary equipment. The second vehicle was a modified minivan, and the third was a used FritoLay van. Heffron began hiring other employees to drive the trucks, and as the fleet grew, the trucks became equipped with full workstations and more comprehensive sets of equipment.
WheelKraft eventually bought a piece of property in northern Hazel Dell to serve as a headquarters. Heffron says he began to contemplate building a garage to serve as a better-equipped service center, but found that the site was too small, so he opted instead to sell the property and moved into the business’s current garage and headquarters — at 1417 N.E. 76th St., Suite F — five years ago, which Heffron and O’Brien refer to as the WheelHaus.
The main garage and mobile fleet businesses are distinct enough that Heffron initially sought to split WheelHaus off into a completely separate brand, but he says the process proved to be too logistically complicated, so for the time being they remain linked, and Heffron and O’Brien say they’re focusing on building the WheelKraft brand.
It’s still a ways down the road, but Heffron and O’Brien say they have their eyes on expansion of the WheelKraft brand, likely in other parts of the Northwest. That could take the form of either a main garage like the WheelHaus or smaller facilities with more mobile trucks.
Either way, Heffron says he doesn’t plan on franchising the brand, preferring to keep all the stores company-owned.
WheelKraft’s current operation serves the Portland metro area, and as a result, Heffron says about 90 percent of the business comes from customers in Oregon. That adds a bit of a drive for the service calls, he says, but as a longtime Vancouver resident, he’s determined to keep the business where it is.
“We’re going to stay here,” he says.
