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Pretty sure I'm a disgrace to the car community

4K views 27 replies 14 participants last post by  bigbadbuddha 
#1 ·
Haha. Long story. But I did it.

 
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#11 ·
They were blue metallic last week. I guess I could explain. One of my buddies have been talking about painting his wheels green for like the past 6 months but never had the balls to pull it off. So, to spite him, another friend painted his wheels purple. Yet another friend joined in and painted his hot pink. Strangely enough the hot pink on his car looked great.

I said, hell with it, I repaint my rims (touch up) every year anyway. So I painted mine blue metallic. Well, they turned out better than I thought they would. Two more friends join our painting frenzy which include highlighter yellow and bright orange. I decided mine was too subtle, and went super neon green. Now we're just way to amused with ourselves and our bravery is causing more people to join. It's an epidemic.

None of these are photoshopped including the 1st one I posted. All this emerged over a period of about 6 weeks. There are more, but that's all I could find on FB.









Oh, and my buddy finally grew a pair and went thru with it ;).

 
#18 ·
Vew, if I remember, you originally painted your wheels a dark gunmetal color, then blue, and now green? Did you remove the old paint before applying the new paint, or did you just rough the existing paint up a bit and paint over it? Did you prime for every fresh coat of paint too or just do paint and clear? Just curious because I bought supplies to paint mine black and I'm pretty sure I'll end up painting mine several times over the years...
 
#20 ·
Most of the work is in the prep... I have enough supplies to do it in this order: clean stock wheels really well with wheel cleaner/simple green/dish detergent (whatever is necessary to get them extremely clean), scuff them up with a red scuff pad and sand with 600 grit and maybe 1,000 grit lightly, clean with compressed air then rubbing alcohol, wipe with a tack cloth, tape off tires with painter's tape, 1-2 light coats of adhesion promoter, 1-2 light coats of self-etching primer, 2-4 light coats of Duplicolor black wheel paint, 1-2 coats of Duplicolor clear wheel paint and possibly sand inbetween color/clear coats with 1,000 grit if I see any runs or rough spots. I'm hoping that'll do my wheels some justice. I'm already prepared to repaint or touch up the wheels every year or every few years if necessary. I'm just curious to see how this will turn out since I plan to spend a few days and lots of time prepping and painting them properly (I hope). Total materials cost me about 50 bucks, so that's better than spending a few hundred on new wheels. Besides, it'll be a learning experience and hopefully stop me from thinking about new wheels for a while - unless I end up screwing it up, in which case, I'll be even more tempted to pick up a new set... but we'll see.
 
#21 ·
Yeah I'm just gonna get a new set of wheels once it comes time to get new tires... Everybody is getting them, but I like the way some of the rotas look, and they're not crazy expensive. I just need to figure out how much they weigh, I would like to keep the wheels under 20lbs.
 
#22 ·
Depending on what size Rotas you get they will be around 20lbs per rim. I ran 17x8 Rota Boost, they weight just at or over 20lbs. I switched to my Enkei RPF1 (15.5 lbs) and I honestly noticed a difference in braking and accelerating. But I cant dispute the look and the price of the Rotas being hard to pass up.
 
#24 ·
New, even the enkei's are competitively priced, I've just never like the look of the rfp-1's... Never been a fan of the spoked wheels that have "pairs" of spokes like those do.. I prefer the evenly spaced versions like the rota tarmac 2's or dpt's. At the same time, I'd want to get a wheel that weighs 16ish lbs. I guess the rpf1 type 2's meet my criteria, they just run 340ish per wheel. Decisions, decisions.
 
#25 ·
Don't use a grit finer than 800. I made the mistake of taking 3 days to sand mine down to 2000grit. It's difficult for paint to stick to this smooth of a surface and resist chipping. 800grit is the number a friend/pro painter gave me.

Yes, my wheels were graphite (duplicolor), then midnight black metallic (rustoleum), then cobalt blue metallic (rustoleum), and now florescent green (rustoleum). The 1st time I painted the graphite, I aircraft stripped, sanded, cleaned, painted, and cleared. After that, I got really lazy and just used a scowering pad rub off loose stuff, cleaned with denatured alcohol to prep. When I did the green, since it was a dark undercoating, I aircraft stripped, white primered, then put on the green, and then the clear.

There's a lot of ways to do it, I don't really have a recommendation over stripping the old paint and sanding vs light sanding, clean and paint over. Reason is because both have their advantages. Advantage by stripping is that you start fresh. PITA because it's hard to get every little bit off w/o being OCD about it, and little things turn out important during prep.

Advantave from painting over existing paint is that you know that it already has a good bond to the paint. If you rough sand it and clean over it, it's easier to get a decent finish with less work. But then you have the color underneath affecting the final color when it dries and etc.

There are a lot of tips and trips that I could probably make an entire how-to about, but so many exist out there now it seems redundant.
 
#27 ·
I should mention that if you guys decide to use the florescent series of colors, you have another factor to worry about. It doesn't seem like paint, but instead florescent powder that's been impregnated in an whatever solution they use in the can.

Basically over spray doesn't exist, but instead there will be powder everywhere as a result. I had to spray a little closer than I normally would. So, you defiantly need a white primer under it. You also need to be aware that it chips/scratches very easily even with a lot of clear on it. I've only noticed this with the florescent paints as my two friends has similar issues with their yellow and orange attempts.
 
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