Painting Wheels Options

[Davesceli]

I wanna repaint my wheels but am unsure as to whether my wheels are powder coated or painted. Is there any way to tell? If it is powder coat how do i remove it...can i just scuff it and paint over it?

Also what paint should i use, I was contemplating using the ceramic engine coating over the dupli-color wheel paint? Any suggestions?

This post has been edited by Davesceli: Sep 1, 2009 - 1:42 AM

[playr158]

It doesn't really matter if you're wheels are powder coated or painted to start with.

You are going to want to sand the surface down pretty good starting with a low grit and working your way up to like 800.

wash the wheels and let dry, wipe with a tack cloth

Lay down some primer in a couple layers

wet sand with high grit, then reprime any bad areas to make sure its all even

rinse/dry/tack cloth

Lay down paint, light even layers.

wet sand/dry/tack

Clear Coat

wetsand/dry/polish

duplicolor wheel paint works well

[Nartanian]

This should help I hope.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5eK5OnHfqA

[SwissFerdi]

I'm gonna be taking this on in a while and that video raised some questions for me. I always thought that the inside of the wheel should be painted as well, yet that guy in the video didn't, it seemed...so would you say it's necessary? Seems like it would take away from the overall look if the inside was still silver.

[95CelicaST]

Of course you paint the inside of the rim. The guy in the video did as well, but he didn't show it, because you should understand what you have to do. Much like how he didn't show him clearcoat the wheel.

[xlee]

I wanna repaint my wheels but am unsure as to whether my wheels are powder coated or painted. Is there any way to tell? If it is powder coat how do i remove it...can i just scuff it and paint over it?

Also what paint should i use, I was contemplating using the ceramic engine coating over the dupli-color wheel paint? Any suggestions?

I would use paint remover to take the paint off, you'll save so much more time over sanding. i tried sanding and it was a tiresome killer job! After that i sand blasted it off with glass and it looked pretty much new. i'm still waiting on my powder coating system to arrive. You can pick those up for pretty cheap now.

[RocketScott]

The stock wheel paint is hard to get off. Paint remover takes a while but is less effort than sanding. You really don't need to get down to bare metal though. As long as the paint that is on there still has good adhesion then you shouldn't need to get it all off. Sanding should be done to smooth everything out. Go through the prime/sand cycle a few times till everything is smooth.

I built a blast cabinet to strip everything off but I plan on getting my rims powdercoated. That's really the quickest, easiest way to do it. Most powdercoating shops also do sandblasting or contract it out as part of the deal.

Oh, and that video was terrible. The finish looked like crap on video which means it looks even worse in real life. As was mentioned before he didn't paint the inside of the wheel. He also didn't take the valve stem out.

This post has been edited by RocketScott: Sep 16, 2009 - 10:35 AM

[playr158]

I'm doing mine right now. But I have 2-piece BBS wheels.

1st i removed the face of the wheels (spokes/center) from the barrel of the wheel, by unscrewing all my bolts (~20 some of them)

once removed i sandblasted the centers front and back, then did some 400 grit sanding work pretty quick.

then primer, paint, wet sand, clear, wet sand, polish, wax