Hello. For winter, I have 14" Del Sol 5 spoke wheels that are starting to look somewhat crappy because the paint has flaked a little in certain areas and has cracked in other places. So I figured I'd go ahead and sand the suckers and paint them, for the look but also to prevent actual rusting or advanced corrosion. I think they may have been painted in the past. I have a few questions:

What's the best way to smooth out the previous paint that is flaked and cracked? Aircraft paint remover + heavy grit sandpaper? 200 grit? Finishing with 600 wet or dry?

I ordered some new Michelin x-ice tyres from tirerack to replace previous Champiro ice pro tyres (which were absolutely terrible). Should I hold off on painting the rims until after I get my new tyres mounted and balanced? The advantage of painting the rims before is that I don't have to be careful about getting paint on the tyres but I guess it's possible my mechanic could slightly damage the edge of the paint job when changing the tyres.

I have an alabaster silver GD and I'm thinking of painting my rims white. What kind of primer do you recommend? What kind of clearcoat?

Thanks for any suggestions that might be contributed, I'll post pics of my project as it goes along.

 

My fave DIY for wheel painting and pretty much what i've always done:

&#9658 FAQ: How to paint your wheels - Honda-Tech

Remove all of the old paint, start from scratch, if the paint is chipping now the original painter might not have prepped very well, and your new paint will chip too.

Always paint the wheels before you mount tires, painting around the lip and onto the barrel is always a good idea, it will keep the paint from chipping off the lip. Give the paint plenty of time to cure before you mount tires, or the balancing machine will screw up the paint on the face. When mounting tires there's no need to touch the face of the wheel with anything that would scratch it (read: no NEED, some techs are clumsy lol)

 

Thanks for the tip! I dunno if I'm gonna go all out with so many grits of sand paper. My old winters are currently mounted on my rims, is it really worth it to get them removed at my mechanic's shop? I guess I'd have to pay at least 25$ to have 'em removed

 

I guess I could deflate them and remove them with a crowbar.

 

The sandpaper part is only if you're polishing the wheels (not painting). You can skip that step. In the FAQ he polished the lip of the wheel.

Maybe just tell your mechanic the situation and let him know you'll be back to have the new tires mounted and he can charge you for that? It literally takes less than a minute to dismount a tire with a machine and is zero physical work. Americas Tire never used to charge me to dismount, but they always knew i'd be buying tires from them, so I guess it's a little different.

Doesn't hurt to ask anyway. I wouldn't try to dismount with a crow bar, I could see it becoming a fumbling mess without anything to hold the wheel, turn the wheel, etc, and could possibly end up scratching the wheel face or something.

If you don't want to spend the money to dismount, painting with the tires on is always an option, I mean they are winter wheels anyway.

 

If you want the new paint to last for a long time get the faces sand blasted. Pretty cheap and takes it down to bare metal.

 

^Yes, I did this to some P Type Supra wheels and some mesh wheels in the past and the paint and finish came out EXCELLENT and was super durable after paint. Cost me like $50 to have a shop do six wheels, but i'm not sure the average going rate for sandblasting.

 

Yea I hear ya. I did a first coat of stripper today. The wheels were totally filthy. I did however get my mechanic's shop to take off my tyres. He let me leave without paying because he knows me and I assured I'd come get my tyres installed at his shop. 64$ for install and balance isnt cheap but they do good work. Here's what I did:

-first spray with a hose to get the worst crud off
-cleaning with rags and dish soap
-quick rinse
-they dried almost instantly but I dried up a few drops
-applied stripper. Man that crap is toxic. I'm glad I actually bought work glasses for the job. I was wearing short sleeves and if ever I accidentally got some on my forearm, the burn is pretty much instantaneous so I'd go rinse it off.
-I let the stripper work for 20 mins
-I went through 3 big sheets of 400 grit emery sand paper and I sorta got most of the paint off. The problem is that the paint gunks up the sand paper very quickly thus rendering it a useless piece of paper with paint gunk on it. The guy at homo depot suggested I only use sandpaper instead of a wire brush. I'm for sure gonna get a wire brush tomorrow, probably the small brass ones to loosen off most of the paint before sanding.

I noticed that my del sol "fat five" spoke wheels have a machined lip. I'm gonna try and wetsand and polish that up. The color I picked up is a dark metallic color. It's called carbon or something. I think it'll look sweet with the polished lip. Thank you so much for refering the thread, there's some nice info in there.

what kind of primer did you guys use when you did your wheels?

 

For sure paint softened by chemical strippers will clog sandpaper in a heartbeat. That guy is nuts wirewheel will not clog and works great for removing the softened paint.

BUT be sure to wear good safety eye protection those little wires will break off and get flung around at speed. Ask me how I know that.

 

Yeah sandpaper will get gunked up real fast, usually doesn't take much to remove the paint, I also used a wire brush (for cleaning battery terminals).

I always use an adhesion promoter (spray) followed with Rustoleum primer. You will have to lightly sand the primer because the adhesive will sometimes leave little dusties if you're not working in a super clean environment. I am a fan of Rustoleum spray paints in general because they're pretty chip resistant and have a nice gloss without a ton of coats (and no clear). I've also used those "wheel paints" and they work well also.

As long as it got done, good on you. Good luck with the project and show us how it came out when you're done

 

Update: so I bought some wire brushes, more sand paper and more stripper. The wheels are pretty much down to bare metal save a couple of spots that still have paint, especially hard to get to corners and such that probably had excess paint from a crappy paint job. I did the centre caps and found that they revealed an Acura logo. The original seller of the mags did tell me they were Integra mags but I've seen that style on del sols. The can of stripper I used said not to use it on plastic and they weren't kidding, it started melting the plastic parts of the centre caps on contact but it just damaged parts that aren't visible.

Tomorrow, I'm gonna give it one last coat of stripper and a ton of elbow grease and I hope that it'll be finished! Originally, the rims were supposed to have a "machined polished lip" and I think they'll look dope with a polished lip and dark carbon coloured spokes so I'm gonna tape the lip and only cover it with clear.

Is it worth painting the part of the wheel that tire fits over? I'm asking because I'm tempted to leave it aluminum color since the lip will be bare metal (with clear). Will it rust if I don't paint it? The tire covers that area anyway. Thanks for your suggestions!

 

Aluminum alloy wheels should not rust. If you want to polish rather than paint, you can, but it's very difficult to do this by hand.

 

Man! I've all but given up trying to strip the god d^%# wheels. I've spent about 2 days trying to strip and sand these rims and I've got one rim that's about acceptable for painting. I'm gonna try and find a place to sand blast the rest! Two damn coats of stripper and there's still little pieces of stuck on paint!

After stripping all the crap on the back, if found out that these rims were made by enkei. Polishing the lip is the least of my concerns, I want to get the rims smoothed up. Maybe I'm too picky but I figure that if there's still old paint and crud the rims will start to flake up.

 

Sandblast and run nude if they are aluminum LOL.

 

So it's been about two months since I started this project and I've finally got the damn rims down to pretty much bare metal. It took me about 3 coats of stripper, plenty of work with 40 and 80 grit sandpaper, Some work in impossible to get to corners with my dremel tool (like the holes for the bolts and around the valve stem. All I have left to do is to to polish the lip first with wet sandpaper to correct some imperfections and then some mothers aluminum polish.

I'd say I've put in easily over 12 hours of work maybe even closer to 20 on those rims (spread over some months). Next time I decide to strip some wheels I'll ask a buddy of mine to slap me as hard as he can. Definitely would go with chemical dip next, even if it cost me 80$ a wheel. F* this sh*t.

 

Cleaning the wheels. You can see the paint is old and chipped and crappy looking.

 

After one (or maybe 2 coats) of DS stripper. We don't have Aircraft Remover stripper in Montreal so that's all I could find (I checked EVERYWHERE!)

 

Stripped to bare metal. Don't think I'll need to use a scuff pad, the sand paper put scratches all over the place. Next up, I'm gonna polish the lips by wet sanding up to 2000 grit and then using some Mothers aluminum polish (and my rotary tool with a cloth wheel attachment).

Also I gotta sand the centre caps. BTW, DO NOT use stripper on any plastic part of centre caps. It'll melt the plastic instantly (as I found out). Luckily the damage won't be visible once the caps installed.

 

I'll try and post pics Sunday if I'm finally done the polishing the lips. Then I'll have to mask the lips and mating surfaces (I hate paint on the wheel mating surfaces, it just flakes off and causes chunks of paint that makes for poor fitment IMO).

Then I'll have to acetone the wheels, give a once over with a tack cloth and start primering. I only bought 3 cans total, I hope I'll have enough for all 4 wheels. Here's what I'm doing:

-Rust-O-leum sandable primer base coat (couldn't find the self-etching primer anywhere)
-Rust-O-leum Carbon mist color (looks like a dark grey almost black pearl)
-DupliColor engine enamel Clear coat (I heard most clears end up yellowing quickly but that engine enamel is at least more resistant to yellowing.

After months of work on stripping and sanding, I hope these turn out nice

 

WOW nice work. LOL the joy of DIY paint stripping you found out the hard way.