Quote:

Marq:

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.





I haven't done a rim in years. Last time I did a rim was back in 1970 on a Triumph TR4A set of steel rims.

I know with my TransAm rims, they were looking a little dodgy. But fortunately we had a rim refurbishing company that did hotswaps. They would show up at your house with a fresh spanking and sparkling newly refurbished set of rims and take your money and the old rims. The cost was a measly $50 per rim and well worth it.

I did have one friend by the name of Carl who was a bit of a perfectionist. He use to put his car away every winter. So what he did one winter was remove the rims from the car and brought them to his basement. Over the winter, whenever the mood struck him... he would venture down to his basement and do a little sanding... a little painting....... a little wet sanding... a little more painting etc etc etc... all winter long. In the spring he showed us how his rims had turned out and they were nothing short of amazing. I would dare say that they were actually better then the factory originals.

So I know that the rims can be done successfully and with good long term endurance. BUT my main area of concern with open or spoked style rims is the road contaminant that will land on the paint.

Brake dust is particularly nasty if it is allowed to build up. And because you have a paint type coating on the rim... it sort of limits the type of cleansers that you would normally be able to use on a rim.

The other problem is simply all the road chips that will happened to the paint on the rims. If the paint is somewhat soft... then you will get a cratered moon type pitting which will slowly reduce the gloss and shine of the painted areas. If the paint is fully hardened... there is the risk the road chips may smack out or separate little pieces of the paint from the rim.

That was one of the reasons I opted to pay the bucks for the professionally refinished / refurbished rims. Their cleaning methods and chemicals are far superior to anything most of us could bring to play on the taak. As well, they have the paint, paint application methods and ability to bake on the paint. And even for the finished clearcoat they put on it... I suspect they have a superior product available to them.

If we were to try to duplicate the cost of chemicals for the acid bath, surface prep chemicals, paint and clear coat, I suspect the cost would end up over the $50 per rim that I paid. And that was not taking into consideration the 'experience' they have at working on rims etc.

One hint is to get a quote directly from the rim refurbishing company, with yourself pretending to be a garage ( not a consumer ) and not going through some middleman company.

IF I was going to do my rims... I suspect that I would probably lean towards doing the aerosol bomb method as compared to a foam brush etc.

I do know that one guy did an amazing job on his set of spoked/splined style rims using an airbrush to lay on the paint. The guy was pretty good at airbrushing art work... and so he just figured that it would be a natural for the rims. He used the same type of paint that he would use when painting a mural on the hood of a car or on the side of a van. At least he knew that the paint itself was durable for exposure to the elements.

One other chap I knew... did all the surface preparation work on his rims and got them up to the stage where the paint was ready to be applied. But he chickened out of doing it himself and instead took it to a local professional autobody / paintshop. They sprayed his rims using a polyurathane... and then clear coated them. I think the total cost was about $100 and they looked factory fresh..

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