Sunday, November 09, 2008 - 07:50 pm, by: Vic Olbromski(Conrad)
Has anybody had experience with refurbishing or repainting their wheels?
I've got a set of Racing Hart 5 spokes that came with the car that have seen better days (I'll try and get some photos up if I get the chance), which I'd love to polish up and maybe repaint them.
They look like 3 piece wheels with bolts all around the edge, so I'd have to remove all of the bolts if I were to do any work. The inner piece (spokes) have a few chips on them, although they only seem to be paint deep.
Can anybody recommend as to what could be done to refurbish these? Would I need to strip the paint off? Would this be done chemically or by high temps?
Sunday, November 09, 2008 - 10:08 pm, by: Paul Mainey(Gttv8)
I paid $200 a rim a All Mag Repairs. My GT-c's got trashed and all four needed to be machined and polished. I'll put some before and after photos if you want.
Monday, November 17, 2008 - 08:56 pm, by: Cameron Stanley(Camskea)
hey Vic I dont want to hijack your thread but I have some questions about wheel refurbishing too and it seems some of it may be relevant to your situation too.
I have Blitz technospeed 18"s, they are a 3 piece rim too. I am wondering after I have take them apart, how tight will be tight enough to put them back together? Will just tightening the crap out of 'bolts' holding the pieces together by hand be enough? Are there specific torque settings?
I am taking mine apart and sanding the middle "spokes" myself and have been quoted $200 cash to repaint all four.
On another note...to fix the gutter rash on polished parts of your rim..... have a look at Ben Lipmans bit in the tutorial section about "Polishing the Intake Pipes". You can (well I did) apply these principals to repairing your gutter rash. Mine were horrible, they're still not absolutely perfect, but they are much better!!
Friday, November 21, 2008 - 10:51 am, by: Brett Harris(Stay_beautiful)
Hi Vic, not sure what type of finish you would like to achieve, but I used to repaint the mags off my 911 by masking the areas off and just using a can of spray paint. If you are painting onto bare alloy use an etch primer or you will be doing the job again. Used a satin finish paint and that gave a nice shine to the wheel that was not to glossy. If you are sanding gutter rash try a detail sander(Bosche and Fein make them)they have a triangular sanding pad and you can get into small areas with it.
Friday, November 21, 2008 - 12:29 pm, by: James Harris(Haro)
Just FYI -
a while ago i got some silver rims for my old car and i took them to a powdercoating place, they sandblasted them, Prepped them (fixed minor gutter rash) and powdercoated them in WHITE)
They looked fantastic afterwards and i paid about $100/rim. Really changed the look of my old ET Pulsar
Sunday, November 23, 2008 - 12:43 pm, by: Vic Olbromski(Conrad)
I've spoken to a few places about getting mine done professionally, they've advised that once you take the bolts out and try to separate the 3 pieces, unless you know what you're doing you may not be able to reseal them correctly and consequently have problems in the long run.
To get mine looking good, I'd have to get them sandblasted, repaired, painted and polished, which will end up costing around $200-$300 per rim.
I think I'll just hold onto these, eventually buy new ones and keep the old as a spare set for the track.
Sunday, November 23, 2008 - 06:12 pm, by: Ben Lipman(Ben12a)
Vic,
I stripped and repainted my Racing sparcos no problems. I even left the tyres on them.
The basic sequence of events was something like this:
1. Strip paint off spokes by a combination of paint stripper and scrubbing with toothbrush/wire brush/scrubbing brush etc. (polystripper is slow but gentle, selleys Kwik-strip is faster but pretty noxious smelling)
2. Clean all the residue off with prepsol/white spirits or similar.
3. Mask up the polished part of the rim with masking tape. Mask the tyre with tape and newspaper. NOTE: I have also used a shed load of vaseline to mask tyres and areas I don't want painted- overspray just wipes off!
4. Etch prime the bare alloy with a can from supercheap/hardware store. Just ask and you'll be pointed in the right direction.
5. Apply primer/undercoat for your chosen finish. Follow can directions. I chose to run with proper automotive clear over base. Any sort of hard wearing paint will do. If you speak to a pro they may sell you some proper wheel paint(frosted silver or whatever it is called)
6. Spray several light coats of the colour, following paint directions.
7. Finish with a coat or two of clear.
8. Cut and polish a week or so later after paint has fully hardened and cured.
Be aware this is all from memory, its been a few years. I'll probably do my Manarays over christmas as one has a dent that needs to be repaired, which will ruin the finish.
Sunday, November 23, 2008 - 09:36 pm, by: Vic Olbromski(Conrad)
Thanks Ben,
I've just been a bit hesitant to paint my wheels because I don't know how well I'll be able to strip the paint off them and if I'll be able to repair the gutter rash.
Also, I'm unsure how much to paint and how much to polish. You can see in the photos that the lip comes back a fair bit which doesn't leave much to paint if all of it was polished. If I were to paint them, I'd need to take all of the bolts out too.
Monday, November 24, 2008 - 05:58 am, by: Michael Keen(Spoilt)
just take them of, get tyres removed and then sandblasted and powder coated, i did it to a set of 17's and they came up new and cost me $250.. and they were even able to fix a lot of the scratch, and the powder coat hid a lot of it to, cause it pretty thick.. cheers
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