The good news continues!
After the saga of stripping, painting, re-stripping, and re painting, the wheels ended up looking like this:
Finally I had enough spondoolies saved for some tyres last week. And they arrived, and I took them to a local tyre place for tubes, fitting and balancing:
And then I took them home and removed the old wheels and comparing them side by side the new ones were definitely going to give the old girl something of a lift: