How To Refinish Sport Wheels?

[thirstyturtle]

So I painted my sport wheels black about a year ago and I'm ready to go back to the original silver. I sanded them using 400 grit sandpaper and then primed, painted, and clear-coated them when I originally painted them.

My initial thought to return to them to silver is to use paint stripper to remove the clear coat, paint, and primer and then Mother's Metal Polish and Mother's Powerball to polish them back to silver. Now that I think about it though, I'm concerned that this will leave them chrome-like (I hate chrome) i.e. super polished.

Does anyone have any thoughts on how to get them looking decent without having to repaint them silver or something? I was planning on some coats of clear after the Polish but that's really all the painting I want to do.

 

[thirstyturtle]

Well I used Aircraft Remover to get the paint off of my wheels and then spent some time sanding them down and cleaning them really well. Next weekend I'm going to repaint them with Dupli-Color Wheel Silver and Dupli-Color Wheel Clear Coat.

Here's a pic of them cleaned and sanded down:

 

[subst4nce]

That looks great, any close up shots? The paint on my SE wheels are bubbling, I'm hoping this could be an easy fix for them. How long did this take you?

 

[thirstyturtle]

These actually look very bad you close as they are simply rough-sanded with 220 grit sandpaper in order to remove the primer from when I painted them black.

However, for you I would suggest using airplane remover to remove the clear coat on your wheels, then just re-apply some new clear coat. There are some great videos I've seen online about how to remove and refinish the clear coat on your wheels.

You can do what you're talking about in a day for sure, they'll look brand new if you polish and wax them when you're done!

 

[4RunnERD]

Someone correct me if I am wrong, but aren't the sport wheels a machined aluminin on the outised of the spoke and then painted silver on the insides of the spoke? Are you going to recreate that factory look or paint the whole wheel silver?

 

[thirstyturtle]

Someone correct me if I am wrong, but aren't the sport wheels a machined aluminin on the outised of the spoke and then painted silver on the insides of the spoke? Are you going to recreate that factory look or paint the whole wheel silver?

You are correct! However, I didn't realize this until I was removing the paint and it EASILY came off of the front surface but VERY difficult on the spokes. The answer is that I will be painting the entire wheel an even shimmery silver. I could recreate the stock look but that sounds like a lot of work, haha.

 

[zerowkul98]

I have a new-to-me '08 and my rims have the "bubbling" up with the inevitable rust issue that seems to go around (although my 03 has ZERO bubbling on the rims).

Anybody have some possibilities to remedy this?

 

[thirstyturtle]

You can do what I said earlier, use Aircraft Remover to easily remove the clearcoat and then clean them really well and re-clear coat them. If it's just the face of the rim that is bubbling then you can/should mask off the inside of the rims before you remove the existing clear and re-apply. Does that help? Again, there are some good videos online of how to do this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCdr8RWQd64&feature=youtube_gdata_player

That video gives you the basic idea, although the guy is removing paint not just clear coat, but you can see how tjr Aircraft Remover works at least. But there are specific videos for replacing the clear coat like you're talking about, I just can't find them right now on my cell phone.

Best of luck.

 

[zerowkul98]

Thanks bro. I'll def. check that out.

 

[Jerrydog]

I'd send them to a wheel restorer, they will bead blast them, paint them them put them on a lathe and spin the machined surfaces down to original finish and clear coat them. I had my 280zx wheels done, it was about 800 out the door for a brand new wheel.

 

[thirstyturtle]

I'd send them to a wheel restorer, they will bead blast them, paint them them put them on a lathe and spin the machined surfaces down to original finish and clear coat them. I had my 280zx wheels done, it was about 800 out the door for a brand new wheel.

$800!? That is ridiculous, I would buy 4 used wheels from someone for that. My objective here was to do this on the cheap, which I'm doing by simply sanding them down and re-painting. Thanks for your advise though!

 

[Jerrydog]

once you scratch the clear coat and or cut thru it you dont have a lot of options.......

 

[thirstyturtle]

once you scratch the clear coat and or cut thru it you dont have a lot of options.......

What do you mean? It's no big deal to remove the clear coat on a wheel and re-apply it if it has started to crack and/or peel.

All I'm saying is that I've removed all of the paint and primer that I had previously applied, roughed up the existing surface with 220 grit sandpaper and plan on re-painting them glossy silver with tons of coats of clear.

I will post pics when complete.
Thank you for all the posts.