Painting wheels
Turbo Mini Forums

Good day one and all,

I'm considering painting my wheels as the brake dust has taken its toll and the machined alloy finish is impossible to get clean (13" Starmags). Assuming I clean them up reasonably well with some alloy wheel cleaner, any ideas on the best way to paint them?

"Standard" body paint in aerosols is the easiest option I guess, but how hard wearing is it? Should I use a primer first? Do I need to key the wheel surface first?

Cheers, Dave.

key it all up, etch prime it and then prime it. then your ready to paint.

that is how i did mine how-ever if i was going to have my wheels all one colour i would be getting them poweder coated.

its relatively inexpensive, hard wearing, and a good finish.

Cheers James,

I've tried rwice through old work contacts to get them powder coated but everyone seems to go quiet when I call! I'll perhaps give them all another call to see if I can arrange something...

Dave

I had my cosmics blasted, then I primed them and sprayed the base colour. then 4 hours of hand painting the black bits, then back to the boothe for some laquer.

Key your wheels up realy well use a DA and foam pad if you can 500 grade shoud be fine.

I would only recommend etch on wheels unless you can get them anodised or chemicaly dipped. You will need good coats of etch to allow you to flat it back depending on how good a finish you want on your top coat.

For top coat I used 2k apply the first few passes as drop coats so you have a good surface for the wet coat to key into then apply the last coat as a drop coat.

You do not want too much paint on the wheel as you will get vapour trapped and micro blisters forming. Once the toap coat is dry give it 2 coats of laquer and leave to cure no cutting back required and the laquer is more resistant to the effects of brake powder I have found.

Rob.

Edited by Mr Joshua on 27th Jan, 2009.

Own the day

If you can, I reccomend powder coating!!

I spent ages attempting to spray mine but it was just a pain and I could tell that I was never going to be happy with the finish (might just have been me though), but im sure if you take your time they'll come out ok. I was using red oxide primer on top of some etch primer, i think they key is in the keying!!

Powdercoating turned out miles better than I thought though:

how did you do that pin striping??? would love to do a orange strip on my black wheels on my mazda.

They look fookin sexual!

Crikey Rich, are they steel Wellers? They look brilliant. Worthy of their place in your lounge

Thanks all for your help, I'm going to have one last crack at getting them blasted and powder coated, failing that I'll stick some music on in the garage and get busy with the etching and painting. Once I get the Mini back from Minimine that is! Which could be a few months according to a conversation I had with Nick on Sunday at Bingley...

Cheers all!

You can get very good results in your garage
It just takes patience.

Edited by Mr Joshua on 27th Jan, 2009.

Own the day

Cheers guys!

Yeah theyre just 7x13 wellers, powdercoated satin black with kawasaki green rimtape from ebay!!

Patent pending so dont copy!! Only kidding

Has anyone tried using some kind of filler primer? My wheels have quite a rough cast finish and it will take a fair few coats of 'normal' primer to smooth them out? Any opinions if this is okay to use?

Im also not sure how to finsh the edges where the paint finishes? I want to avoid the primer showing around the edges of the paint, but I don't know if the paint would flake off if it was painted straight onto metal around the edges (if you know what I mean) lol.

Would hammerite spray be an option, unsure on how well it coats and finishes??

Edited by matty on 8th May, 2009.

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1/4mile in 13.2sec @ 111 terminal on 15psi

after you have etch primed it filler primer should be ok to use i would have thought.

as for finishing it when i did some a while back i just masked it up at the beggining and the didnt touch the tape until i was ready for laquer.

then i just flatted it back abit trying my best to smooth the edges (where the paint stops at the rim) without going through it. Then i laquered the whole thing to sort of seal the edges if you get me?

TBH if you take your time and mask it up well the end of the paint should happen where there is a change in direction of the alloy, ie at the rim. so it wont really be like a step up from metal to paint.

Cheers James, the problem with my wheels is that the paint will finish on a curve not a corner and im not laquering them either.

Who would of thought that something so simple would be so bloody difficult! lol

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1/4mile in 13.2sec @ 111 terminal on 15psi

well good luck! haha

im sure one of the clever fookers will have something wise to input!