Wheel Painting
I decided to mount my New (to me) tires on my stock rims today, He does it the "Old fashioned" way, using a couple of steel bars, some dish soap and a little muscle to mount the rubber on the rims......no tire mounting machines! I don't have any pics of him doing this....as he's not much for taking pics when he's working.....Since he was coming over to do that, I figured it would be a good opportunity to strip all the old coating off my rims, so that I could just paint them once the rubber was installed.
Here's a shot of one of my rims in their pited and corroded state:
Here's a shot of it after I wire-wheeled it:
And here's a pic of all 4 tires mounted on the rims:
Then it was time to do some recon, and look at some painted wheel pics and see what I could come up with on my own!
I went to my local Canadian Tire Corp. Store, and did some shopping!
Using the buyers points I had on my Canadian Tire Mastercard, I bought some Zinc Primer, Duplicolor Metallic Grey Base coat, some Duplicolor Clear Coat, a tube of pre-mixed Bondo, and some new Valve caps!
Next, I took all my wheels, and spread them around the garage floor, and started masking them all off:
Under the watchful eye of my 3 year old.....when she wasn't taking pictures of my poster board of Rocky Balboa:
I then coated them all with the Zinc Primer. (The can says it's recommended for Aluminum or Galvanized Steel, so I think it was a good choice!)
After alot of patience, and hard work....I'm almost finished these darn wheels! The problem is....I ran out of paint.....twice! HA HA! The first time, I ran out of Base Coat....the second time.....Clear!
Anyway, gonna have to wait till tomorrow morning to get some more, and maybe finish them up before I go to work. In the mean time...here are some teaser pics:
Here's a shot of one of the wheels....look closely at the "TOYOTA" lettering, I did that in a Metallic Red paint:
After base coating them, I also decided to sand off the outer lip of the wheel, leaving the bar aluminum exposed, and then clear over it all.
The wheels were almost done, but one got fudged up just after clearing it! The darn newspaper I used to mask the wheels, ended up blowing over in the wind and landed on my newly clear coated wheel!! So the next day I planned on , wet sanding it, re-basecoating a section, and then re-clearing it all.
The next pic...is one of the Center Caps:
Alright, so first thing the next morning, was drive over to Canadian Tire to find more clear coat and some more of the base coat grey. When I got there, I found that the original Duplicolor Clear coat I bought was OUT OF STOCK. So I looked at some of the others, and found some Duplicolor High Performance Wheel Coating. I picked it up, and headed home.
Once there, I wet sanded my fudged up wheel, and then used the base coat to blend in the repair. After that, I clear over top, and then continued to do the rest of the wheels and center caps.
Here's a pic of the finished product....I took the time to shine up the tire too...just to give you guys the full effect! lol!
You can't even see the repair I did......
What do you guys think??? Here's a quick before and after:
Before:
After:
After it was all said and done, 3 coats of Zinc Primer, about 6 coats of Basecoat, and 5 coats of Clear Coat!
I'm happy with the result! Almost want to take off my Procomp's and Bighorns and Run these Now instead of the Winter!!!