DIY: Refinishing/Repainting wheels
 

I'll start by saying three important things:

1) Depending on the quality of the job you want, and how much money you have to spend, you may NOT want to do this job yourself. Having a professional do it may very well be the best option for most people. See my discussion/conclusion section at the end for details.

2) I can't say this is the best techniques or methods possible, but it is the best I could put together from looking at various how-to discussions on the internet and having some good people to talk to about it. Re-read #1 if you're unsure about what you're doing!

3) There have been other threads with instructions for painting wheels. I think this is a far better and more comprehensive approach than most of those, but is also more time and $. Re-read #1!

Background: I had an amazing set of black O.Z. Ultraleggera wheels. Very light and strong, and they served me well on multiple track days as well as 50,000 miles of daily driving, year-round. They were really cosmetically worn at this time though, and had some small sections of curb rash too. The final straw was the “wheel shine” stuff that I somehow accidently elected to have applied at the car wash, which left gross white streaks on them. And the clear coat was peeling really badly too. Pictures of the ugliness:

Step 1: Set aside time to do this. I did it over the winter when these wheels/tires were not being used, cause I had my snow set on. This process WILL take a few days minimum, and possibly a few weeks, so plan accordingly if you don’t have a second set of wheels.

Step 2: Go to tire shop and have the tires dismounted. You cannot do this job properly by leaving the tires on and masking off areas.

Step 3: Remove center caps.

Step 4: Wash the wheels THOROUGHLY with lots of soap. The key to good painting is proper prep work. There must be absolutely NO dirt or oil on the wheels.

Step 5: Remove old wheel weights. This was sort of a pain. Use a chisel or large falthead screwdriver to pry them off. The glue backing is very hard to remove, but obviously it must be removed completely. I used a combination of a steel wool pad, a Dremel tool with abrasive bit, sandpaper, and some lacquer thinner. Soaking a rag in lacquer thinner (and soaking the remaining paper backing material too) and then lots of hard rubbing was most effective. My arm hurt after that….

Step 6: Final cleaning and then sanding/prepping.
Find a comfy place to work….I set up a chair in the garage, because you will be creating some dust. If you are repainting wheels that have already been painted, my understanding is that you do not need to give a coat of primer. If for whatever reason you get down to bare metal, then they need primer before paint.

EVERY AREA that you want to be painted must have a rough, scuffed (ie. sanded) surface, or else the paint will not adhere properly. ***I can’t say this enough: take your time with this, or else it will come out shitty*** For wheels that have a lot of sharp angles or small crevices, it’s a huge pain in the butt, but it must be done. Every surface, every crevice. I used a combination of 400 grit sandpaper and sometimes a dremel tool with an abrasive wheel on the end. Look up “scuff sanding” if you need more info about the goals of this step. I’m not kidding, it took me about 1.5 to 2 hours PER WHEEL, and even then I know I didn’t do a perfect job.

Note that you do not need to sand/prep the inside of the wheel that faces the tire mounting surface, because it will be covered by the tire and you won’t see it, so you won’t be painting it.

When you’re done with this step, you need to ask yourself: is the wheel ENTIRELY free of all dirt, dust, oil, and grease on all surfaces to be painted? If not, get back to it…

Step 7: Painting.

I thankfully had access to professional painting equipment (pressure spraygun and a vacuum paint booth), and someone who knows how to use them. Obviously most people do not, so I understand this part of the DIY isn’t really helpful to a lot of people. You would substitute step 7 here for use of a regular rattle can or whatever other paint solution you think is appropriate.

Wheels get a lot of abuse. I don’t know if this was 100% necessary, but I thought it made sense to get high-quality automotive paint, because I wanted them to look good and have a really durable finish. I went to an auto-paint store and got a quart of DuPont paint, the same stuff you’d use to re-finish body panels. It’s not a simple system – together it was a pint of color basecoat, a can of basecoat activator, a pint of clearcoat and a can of clearcoat activator. All together these four components cost $185.

Use strong wire to hang the wheels by a surface that will not be painted (probably around the ‘beltline’, see pics). Carefully read the paint specifications – they usually only have an active pot life of 2-3 hours. With careful spraying of VERY THIN layers to prevent running, you should be able to do 2 full coats on all visible surfaces, including the internal surface (which one does see), all with a quart of basecoat. Repeat with a few layers of clear coat. Again, refer to the paint documentation for all of this.

Step 8: Drying/curing. The paint should be dry to the touch after about 1-2 hours, but it will still be SOFT. You should handle the wheels very gently.

You then have two options for drying/curing the paint. You can either “bake” them in an oven (sorry, I don’t know what temperature) for about an hour (obviously a large industrial oven is best, but I’ve heard you can also just fit them in a large kitchen oven….). Or, you can leave them in a relatively warm/DRY basement (near the heater is best). 2 weeks in a dry basement around 80 degrees will be fine. This is what I did.

You will know they are done because a) you won’t smell any paint smell any longer, meaning the coating is no longer giving off gas, and b) the paint is no longer soft (it won’t scratch from a hard fingernail pressed into it, try it on a non-visible surface.) If you try to re-mount the wheels before they are dry, the tire machines will completely ruin your paint job!!

Step 9: All done!

Time spent: about 12 hours
Materials: (I had some of these already, but assuming you needed to buy everything)
-duPont automotive paint, clearcoat, and activators: $185
-Sandpaper, steel wool, lacquer thinner, box of gloves: $30
-Unmounting, re-mounting, and balancing: $100 (this usually varies by wheel size)
-Total: about $315

For reference, to have this done by a well-respected local professional would be about $500-$600.



Other considerations and What I Would Have Done Differently:

a) My understanding was that, because they were already painted, I could just sand them well and then re-paint. But would a coat of primer been a good idea? There were some small areas that required MANY coats of paint, and it was probably due to less-than-ideal prepping.

b) Color selection – I really wanted a dark bronze color, the goal was to have them look like this: http://www.101modifiedcars.com/modif...ro-mirrors.jpg
To be honest, I failed with the color. I had to choose the paint color based on one of those little color tiles in the store, and it ended up coming out as a medium gold, not a dark bronze. The paint job came out great, but it may not look good on my red rx-8. I’ll see…

c) This took a LOT of time and effort, and was only maybe $250 cheaper than paying someone else to do a complete professional job. For me it was mostly about learning how to do it and the satisfaction of doing this myself, which is how I prefer most of my car projects.


CONCLUSION: My conclusion is that if you just need a OK-ish refinishing job, then all it will take is 3 hours and a few cans of spray paint, in which case that is fine. But if you want a really high-quality paint job for wheels, which involves doing all of these steps, you should really consider having some else do it. It’s just a surprisingly large amount of time and money, and I even had access to good spraying equipment, which was very useful. Don't get me wrong: they came out great, and look really good. I just don't know if the money/time/effort was worth it, beyond that of a good learning experience.

Hope this was helpful, feel free to post feedback...

Really good DIY. I think your conclusion of time/effort/cost doing it yourself vs. paying to get it done professionally is a helpful point to always consider when fixing/repairing/rebuilding/etc. That being said I think most people on this site are willing to put in the extra effort to try it themselves and even if it doesn't come out perfect they appreciate the learning experience. Lastly, my favorite part of this post is the picture of your no cost sanding work station (office chair and indoor floor lamp). Thanks again for a good read.

Nice work man. Thanks for taking the time to do it. I can now see where my money is going when I pay someone else to do it :) I suck at anything dealing with paint.

here is my version:

1. Ship wheels here: http://wheelsamerica.com/

2. Enjoy life.

3. Give them my CC# upon completion. :lol:

:lol: yep, and they are local :) But I can appreciate the know how. The few things I have tried to paint have ended badly. As a matter of fact many of my attempts at anything custom have ended badly :lol: