Painting Factory LT Wheels

[mcphers4]

So I’ve had my Sonic for a year now, a year today actually, and I had been toying with the idea of changing up the look of the car with a wheel color change. I liked the look of the original 5 spoke wheels, but I felt they were lacking a bit.

So I went down to my local O’Reillys and picked up a couple cans of Dupli-Color’s wheel paint and the accompanying gloss clear for about $30 with tax.

I started out with a quick car wash and then took off the wheels for a more detailed cleaning with soap, water, a bucket, and a good brush. The wheels had never looked so clean and I almost had second thoughts about painting them.

Next I started the monotonous task of scuffing the wheels with a red Scotch-Bright pad. I bought only one and cut it in half, but by the end the two halves were pretty used up and made scuffing more and more time consuming. I would recommend buying 2; they’re only a couple bucks anyway.

I sprayed off all the dust with compressed air and followed that up with alcohol and a rag to clean off all the grease and other contaminants.

Now it was finally time for paint. It takes a lot of patience to make sure you get all the books and crannies, especially between the spokes. I found it easier to grab a good light, like an LED, and shine it on the wheel with one hand and spray paint with the other. I applied one dust coat, 3 light coats, and one medium/heavy coat to cover, allowing 10 minutes between each coat. I bought 2 cans of color, but only needed one can. These 15’s aren’t as big as I expected.

After color comes clear and with this paint, it must be applied within one hour of the last color coat. For this I only did one dust coat, 2 light coats, and one medium/heavy coat.

I finished laying paint about 7:30pm and let the wheels cure overnight before handling them. I ended up mounting the wheels back on the car about 11:30/12:00pm the next day.

I had bought some black anodized aluminum lug nuts from amazon a while back and I finished off the wheel overhaul with black anodized aluminum valve caps.

I’m truly happy with the way these look and I’m curious to see how this paint holds up in the Vegas heat and intense sun. Hope this write up inspires others to consider wheel paint instead of buying new wheels (for those of us on very limited budgets).

 

[eatnsleepn]

Quite the improvement over the factory color which must be named "cheap plastic". Looks better than the plasti-dip rims I see all over town. Nice job!

Sent from my LG-TP450 using Tapatalk

 

[OssiansFolly]

I Plasti-Dip'd my rims and couldn't be happier. Same general process, and the dip comes right off if you want to do a different color or repair scratches or nicks.

 

[mcphers4]

I Plasti-Dip'd my rims and couldn't be happier. Same general process, and the dip comes right off if you want to do a different color or repair scratches or nicks.

I was originally going to do that to see if I liked the color change, but living in the desert and this intense sun that we have year round, the plasti-dip just doesn’t last.

 

[Coolbreezin]

Excellent outcome. Thanks for the detailed process. I was considering painting or powdercoating mine red to match my car. Perhaps Ill give this a try before I shell out the big bucks on a professional job.