Marq:

Very interesting story on the rims. I noticed the newer gold rims were different than the black ones, but the black ones looked like bonnie rims. The funny part is that they would fit the Mustang hubs just fine too :P Lucky you got them back in 1998 or you would have had a heck of a time getting them now considering how much traffic eBay gets these days.

Personally, I would have kept the original McLaren rims in storage just to be able to swap the car back to stock if the need or desire ever arose. The Saleen rims do look better (although I like the black color better) with the wider lip. I'm a fan of modding cars to suit my desires, but I also don't want to hack it up so much that I can't put it back to factory stock for the sake of collectibility.

Its funny that you mention the TA rims... that one year of crosslaces happen to look almost identical to Buick GNX rims and people with Grand Nationals use the TA rims to make a GNX clone. Look 'em up on Ebay, they go for quite the pretty penny.

The Bonnie crosslace rims are used by later-era Pontiac and Buick guys (after the lug pattern was changed) to hint to GNX rims too. The lug pattern of actual GN/Regal rims is different so we have to use the Bonnie rims for our lug pattern. When painted black, Bonnie crosslace rims actually look pretty darn nice: http://www.cardomain.com/ride/2556893/7

Lucky for us, the Bonnie crosslace rims were used from 92-99, were the lightest alloy rims available during that time, and they're easy to find for pretty cheap.

Back on topic, I'm in the works of getting a set and plan on painting them with rustoleum this spring, so thats why I was asking if you happened to paint a set yourself :P

I think I'm going to use aircraft stripper to get the old clearcoat off, and then just spray bomb the crosslace section... I don't see much point in trying to roll the laces.