Winter Wheel Painting

[LegacyGT]

For some reason the gods of snow are withholding white wintery bliss that Subaru owners dream about, and instead has brought us temperatures in the 50's just a few days before the new year. Rather than get upset at the weather I took advantage of it to get in some work that normally would be put on hold until spring.

Since the temperatures have gotten below freezing, I have had to retire my extreme performance summer tires and throw on the Blizzak snow tires. Unfortunately there has been no snow to play in yet

The rims I have my Blizzaks mounted on are the OEM tires that have been demoted to winter tires, so I dont feel bad if I get a bit of curb rash should I push a scoobie drift a bit too far :whistle: The rims have some cosmetic damage, but more importantly after having my black rims on all summer I really like the black on black look much better than the silver on black, so it was time to cue the music and get to work (A-team theme)

First order of business was to remove the wheels and clean them up. There was a lot of old wheel weight adhesive to tackle and as you may have already seen the wheels were very contaminated with iron. Clean up was done with goo-gone and a plastic razor blade to remove adhesive, then Iron-X to decontaminate, followed up by a claying and one last pass with goo-gone to prep the surface for painting.

The pictures of the car before:




Old wheel weight goop:



Now to let Iron-X Do it's thing:









After a long and drawn out (and bloody) battle, things were looking much better:


Clean wheel compared to dirty one:





Now for the painting

I chose Plasti-Dip spray for this job after using it on my front grill and getting some really great results. I found it in the hardware store with the spray paint and promptly bough out the stores stock :evil:


Ready for prime time!

The actual painting process I didn't get a lot of pictures of because I didn't want my camera around to get overspray on it. First thing I did was put on my chemical respirator and I was very glad that I did. Plasti-Dip is really cool stuff, however, it has some really nasty chemicals in it. I didn't notice at the time, when when I was finished and took off the respirator to walk back inside the chemicals about knocked me out. I ended up having to leave my jacket I had been wearing in the garage overnight to air out and not stink up the house.

The painting process went well, but it took a lot of coats to cover up the OEM silver and get the look I was wanting. I found a good application method that worked well for me by applying a heavy first coat (wet) and then letting it dry before layering light coats about 10 minutes apart. I found when painting my grill that you can control the texture a bit by how far away you spray from; since I was wanting a fairly smooth finish I was spraying from about 10'' away. I painted the back side first, then sprayed the fronts.

In all I used up just about 4 cans of Plasti-Dip. I am very happy with the results, and I think for an afternoon's worth of effort it came our really well. The wheels won't hold up to a microscope, but I doubt that anyone would realize this was a rattle can job unless they were really scrutinizing the wheels for some reason.

A few shots of the wheels while curing (they are propped up with the spray paint caps so the bottoms don't touch the plastic I have under them).


I used the halogens to help gently speed up the drying process:


You can see (below) that I have taped off the back portion that comes into contact with the discs so that it will still have good metal on metal contact where it mounts.




Finished Shots (before & after)

Before:


After:


Before:


After:



Close up:





You can see the light texture


In the daylight I am really happy with how they look, and I think it is a huge improvement from where I started. I will report back on the durability of the Plasti-Dip spray, however, this stuff is really fantastic. I think I will use it in the near future to do some underbody coating and wheel well dressing. It is very versatile stuff.

Lessons learned - I have a few thin spots that look a bit pewter in direct sun that were in difficult to spray areas, but that is splitting hairs. It also takes a lot of Plasti-Dip to get a good thick coat on. Each wheel has 6-7 coats on it, and I used almost 1 can per wheel.

Now its time to go drive around and show off my new look :gidiup:

[Ted S.]

Looking good. Did you ruff-up the rims with sandpaper before painting?

[LegacyGT]

Looking good. Did you ruff-up the rims with sandpaper before painting?

No, I left the surface as is, and just made sure it was surgically clean. I have not had any adhesion problems with my front grill (used the same process), and this gives me the option to peel it off if I want to remove it in the future.

[Ted S.]

No, I left the surface as is, and just made sure it was surgically clean. I have not had any adhesion problems with my front grill (used the same process), and this gives me the option to peel it off if I want to remove it in the future.

Interesting.

[CEE DOG]

I was looking forward to this writeup Bill! As always there was no let down Looks great and curious to see the long term durability. I like the idea of using it on the underbody!! I think a full CDC bodysuit may be in order when trapped under the car with it! I may have to find some places I could use this stuff!

[LegacyGT]

I was looking forward to this writeup Bill! As always there was no let down Looks great and curious to see the long term durability. I like the idea of using it on the underbody!! I think a full CDC bodysuit may be in order when trapped under the car with it! I may have to find some places I could use this stuff!

Thanks Corey, it is a bit of a departure from the typical thread, and I am curious as to how it will be received. I had a lot of fun trying my hand at doing some painting and instead of just cleaning something up, and instead creating something entirely new.

Regardless, I had a great day working on the project and it kept me occupied for most of the day. I also am really happy with the new look.

Now I need to work on painting my rotors like you did on Sky (that was a fantastic writeup BTW), though with as much auto-crossing as I am doing, I may just end up replacing them soon.

[Nick McKees37]

Cool write-up Bill, thanks for sharing.

[alko]

They came out looking SWEET!!! I've heard the name Plasti Dip before but never knew what it was. Rims look pretty sweet. You should tint the windows

[Jeff120]

Thanks for the write up Bill.
Im curious as to the "peel it off part" as Ive never used spray plastidip, I have used it to dip tools. So this isnt permanent? If it gets a rock chip or scrape will it then peel off?
Im interesting on using it as an undercoating on my frame, maybe just flat rustolem will be better for that purpose?

[tw33k2514]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0pbT9lVFag]Conan O'Brien: "Looks Good!" - YouTube[/video]