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Rico
16-12-2005, 08:39 AM
Disclaimer: The following is provided as a GUIDE ONLY, and neither myself nor Ozhonda take any responsibility for the outcomes of someone else doing the following. You follow these steps at your own risk!

There are no pics, but hopefully you can do it yourself via my description, if anyone needs me to verify or elaborate, feel free to ask me.

Ok, so you have some rims, your cheap like me and don't want to pay the extra $$$ to get it powdercoated, heres a step by step guide on how I painted my honda accord VTi Alloys. They were silver to begin with.

First you need sand paper, both real rough and smooth paper, a sander (dont actually need it but it'll save you hours and alot of blisters on your hands), something to remove grease (WD40), a mask (safest tool as when you sand all the particles go everywhere and are harmful to breathe in) and all the necessary paints (primer, coats and clear coat).

I. If your painting the rims with tyres attached, its best to cover the wheels so no paint gets onto the tyres. I covered the tyres (well the outer core) with masking tape and alot of it. You have to press down hard if you want it to stick to the tyre and apply alot of it.

1. I sanded the wheels to the core using sand paper (with my hands) and a Sander (one of the sanding hand held machines). Now use the ROUGH sand paper as this does the job alot more faster, don't worry it'll leave alot of scratches but you can deal with that later. The Sander allows you to cover large areas really fast, however you cannot get inside the little bits and pieces with it, this is where using the sand paper with your hand comes useful. Now your hands are gonna kill, trust me, I had blisters everywhere, but its the price to pay for being a cheapo LOL jk. Usually when you sand (this is just with my wheels so I dont know if every wheel is the same) you go through 3 layers of paint. When you sand down the first coat, you'll get a light grey finish under the coat, then when you sand further it should turn an ugly grey that isnt shiny at all, now this looks like its the first layer however it isnt, the final layer under the grey layer is basically a silver finnish, like metal. To test this, just keep sanding down till it doesnt change colour.

2.* Once you have sanded it down well, and I mean well because if you dont sand it down well it'll crack and peel later on (i learnt the hard way), clean the wheel with grease remover or WD40 to remove all the crap lying on it. And clean it well with a cloth wiping it constantly till when you wipe it the last time it'll wont pick up any dirt.

3. Once you have done that, use the smooth sand paper and sand it down everywhere till you dont have any scratches lying around, it should be smooth like a baby's butt. If you dont do this, you'll have these scratches imprinted on the wheel.

4. Now its time to prime, it totally depends on how much you want, but I put on like 2-3 coats of primer onto the wheel. Theres many ways of doing this but I found it best if I put the wheel side ways and sprayed it from like 30cm away so no building of paint occured, but if your an amatuer its bound to happen, DW you can fix it later! To apply spray paint theres many ways, I did like a large circular motion, not zig zag or anything and went around as many times till I covered the rim. But try to reduce the amount of times you apply paint as this causes build up. You can do it in many styles, so choose which is best for you (maybe practice of an object first).

5. After each layer of primer, get the smooth sand paper and lightly sand down the layer, so its smooth (this is if there is build up of paint).

6. Now apply coats of the paint in the same fasion you did with the primer, I put about 6 coats of paint (and keep it the same paint). Sanding between the layers. The final layer should look perfect and there should be no need to sand it down.

7. Now apply 2-3 layers of clear coat in the same fashion that you applied the paint.

8. Now take off the sticky tape, polish the wheels, spray some tyre polish on the tyres and they should look brand spanking new!
Also you can do little bits and pieces to make it look unique. For example, my rims had an outer ring around it and I left it silver, giving it more of a JDM or rim look.

*If you see any cracks of paint, basically you have to sand down the paint and start all over again, I had to do this as I was lazy to start off with Do yourself a favour and if your going to do this, do it well and DON'T be lazy - trust me, you'll save yourself $$$ in buying new cans and alot of time.

Here's the finished peice of stock honda accord VTi rims that I painted myself. Most people who see my car think that they are actual 15" rims other than stock.
BTW mine are for sale, need to upgrade to 17"!!! PM ME!!!!

http://img211.imageshack.us/img211/3039/rimszzz6qq.jpg
http://img211.imageshack.us/img211/7922/ricoaccord9fp.jpg

EG5[KRT]
17-12-2005, 10:51 PM
why didnt u use paint stripper to get off the paint ?

Rico
17-12-2005, 11:16 PM
Well cause I didn't have much knowledge and both members from Ozhonda and staff at autobahn told me to sand it. Can you use paint stripper? I'm pretty sure its not paint that covers the stock layers, only the top layer is paint or something.

[ricer]
17-12-2005, 11:31 PM
narh just sand it
the paint stripper does next to nothing
it can actually wreck the next layers of paint if you dont get it all off

bigteethygrin
18-12-2005, 02:25 PM
caustic paint stripper will eat into alloy wheels.. its never recommended to use it. You can get special aluminium stripper but is nearly impossible to find leaving you no choice but to find an aluminium preparer to strip the wheels for you.

Well done for working your fingers to the bone man!.. hard job but wort the effort in the end!

Limbo
24-12-2005, 08:07 AM
you could pay for them the be sand blasted that will save your fingers!

I got my rims done and they didn't use pait stripper. I think i has something to do with the fact it can damage your finish. The actually just sand blasted it which give the same finish as sanding but a more even finish.

EG6_SiR
24-01-2006, 12:51 AM
Paint stripper is fine to use on wheels, it is actually better than sand blasting. Plus it only takes the paint off that you dont want. It takes a little longer, but it is a cheaper and it doesnt attack the metal as hard as sand blasting does. Just get a industrial strength from any local hardware.

EG5
24-01-2006, 07:50 AM
Nice one , anyway here is few of my refurbish DIY rims collection that i had in the past.

Volk racing GRN ( DIY polished lip )
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v677/YonasLiu/parts/PA210002.jpg[/url]

Kosei racing ( DIY lip + paint)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v677/YonasLiu/parts/IMG_4265resized.jpg

Black Racing ( DIY paint )
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v677/YonasLiu/parts/DSC01562.jpg[url="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v677/YonasLiu/parts/DSC01562.jpg"] (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v677/YonasLiu/parts/PA210002.jpg)

Zimp13
25-01-2006, 12:13 AM
how long that does the paint last though? worries me is paint is not gonna b strong, one small stone will chip the paint off....

Rico
25-01-2006, 08:38 AM
I haven't had any bits chip off, I even scrapped a gutter and none came off, I guess it depends on what paint you use or how many layers you apply