Yea I'm looking around for prices now. There's only like 2 places that are local. One guy said he would need to know the condition of the rims, what's on them, what color they are and what color they are going to be to give me an answer. I know ieither want black with a polished lip or all gun metal. And I planned on doing the prep work myself. And if they find any imperfections they can easly fix them. But I don't want to spend no more then 150-200 for the powder coating. If its more then that, then I will rattle can them. Reaper, do you have a picture of a place to by the said dupli color gun metal spray paint and clear??

 

I believe Autozone/Advanced Auto/etc should carry the paint... at least all the ones that I've been in the paint section of have had it anyway. The can should look like this:




If you want, I can dig up the wheel painting walk-through I typed up.

 

Prep and everything? That's would be great.

 

ok im undecided on how i want to prep the rims. i have been reading alot of info on how people painted there rims. some used aircraft paint remover. others just sanded. alot of the debate was if the rims were aluminum. now my question is should i just slightly sand the rims and then primer-paint. or go with the aircraft remover-primer-then paint.

and also what primer should i use. some people used self etching primer, others used filler primer, and some people didnt primer at all. if i use a darker primer will the overall color of the rims be darker? i kind of want a dark gunmetal color. where it doesnt match the car much.

and reaper..thanks for the link. it helped me out oh so much. lol

 

whine, whine, whine... that's all you do. The thread didn't get bumped and I kinda forgot. Here's the link.

The link covers it, but I sanded, used filler primer, sanded some more, used more filler primer, sanded, laid the color, etc. All the sanding is wet-sanding. (And my wheels are/where aluminum.)

 

either way your going to need to sand even if you went with paint stripper. i would use paint stripper if theres paint on the rims, otherwise i would just clean and sand them. after that just lay down some layers of primer, then color, then clear. I used Duplicolor Engine Enamel paint to paint my wheels. when i did my hx i just cleaned and sanded them, i didnt use paint stripper

 

well my hx rims are not painted. so i should just skip the paint stripper and sand down the clear?
i kind of wanted a dark gunmetal, and they didnt have black filler primer. so i bought the darkest filler primer they had(gray) and then a black sandable primer. so im going to use the metal bar from the strut bar (rear one) and im going to use filler primer, then black sandable primer, and then paint. and on the other half im going to use filler primer and then paint. i will go with the darker finish.

sfazn- how much sanding did you do?

reaper- thanks for the link

 

Its not a very hard thing to do. If there is no paint on the wheel, why would you use a paint stripper? Just sand them enough to give the paint something to hold on to. Lay down a couple coats of primer, then wet sand it with a fine grit paper. Lay down a few color coats, then wet sand again. I usually lay down another semi-wet coat of color after wet sanding. Then a couple coats of clear and wet sand with an even finer grit. Add more clear afterwards and wet sand and buff out the final coat. Thats what I did to the Rota's on my car and they have held up great.

 

just sand it enough to get the surface rough. work your way from lower grit up to 2000 grit sandpaper, wetsand at 1500 and 2000

 

well i just want to make sure, i want them to come out good. thanks for all the help