Painted the drums finally!

[KellyJ]

Wow so, after days of preparing, including buying a can of Dupli Color and a wire brush, the beautiful day finally came for me to take some time off (I have no classes Thursday, which is nice) and paint my hideous rear drums that had collected 6 years of rust and mud and crap. It was a little tougher than I expected, and I ran into somewhat of a problem, as you will see in the pictures.

First is a picture of the right rear before I started:

Next, I had to remove the wheel, which was a pain because the lug nuts were on so damn tight, I had to jump on the wrench to get them off. I finally got the rim off and this is what I had to deal with next You can see where I am going with this...

After fifteen minutes of tugging, I got the drum off and set it aside to paint. I decided to use a brush and get as much brake dust out of the assembly as I could.

Then did the reverse, after waiting for the paint to dry, and was left with this:

It's not perfect, but hey, it looks 100x better than it did before in my opinion.

Then I went to tackle the left side, and I had the same problem with the lugnuts only this time it was worse...and I managed to break my wheel lock off in the wheel lock key, and had to take it to a Toyota dealer, where they luckily got it off in about 2 minutes and also for free, and replaced it with a regular lug nut. This is what I dealt with:

I got it all sorted out finally and was able to paint the second drum as well. I will add a few more pics, since I was bored waiting for the paint to dry. Remember, always pick a good place to do your work.

This pretty sums up my day.

The finished product. If anyone wants any info on how to do it, just let me know. I'd be happy to save anyone from the mistakes I made.

 

[004Gunner]

That's a huge improvement and it's amazing how the little details add up to improve the overall look. It probably would have gone smoother if you had cracked open those beers I would recommend you swap out all those locking lugs. McGard is pure garbage and their customer service is terrible. I've broken 2 of those locking lugs using a tire iron, no impact. And the first time was when I was trying to change a flat on the highway

 

[rollingthunder]

looks good man I did the same thing last weekend


haha what we do to make our rides look better....

http://www.toyota-4runner.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=36275 :artist:

 

[Desertyodaboy]

looks real nice, i need to do that to mine soon

 

[KellyJ]

I recommend it, it's a really cheap way to dress it up, and I felt relatively accomplished doing this all on my own, although I would recommend jack stands, and I probably should have had some before I embarked on this, since i did clean out some gunk from the underbody, but seeing that what I did to the car didn't put much more stress on the jack than changing the tire, I figured I was okay. But never ever get under a car when its just supported by only a jack.

Thunder I like what you did with the front calipers, I am planning on doing that once I get home this summer and get a new wheel lock key, and plan on painting them red, which I think will look good.

 

[hvguy]

lol,

for future reference, if you lose you key to the wheel lock- you can use a hammer drill to vibrate the nut while somebody else uses some vise-grips to twist it off.

and wow-never herd if them breaking before... Good thing I replaced mine with regular nuts. I dont think anybody would want some OEM wheels