Wheel respray DIY

[Jarred]

get yourself some fine line tape mickey. it's the tape the pro's use when doing two tones jobs etc. after you lift the tape off, there's a very small line between the two colours, rather than if you had used masking tape, which creates a large line (that you can feel) between the colours.

hope that makes sense. you just use it on the edges, and then use masking tape just to protect the areas you don't want painted.

[Mrk_Mickey]

Sorry dude, I'm not convinced lol...it's probably going to be expensive and time consuming. One of those I have!

We're sanding down the surface and then machine-polishing it..any line will be annihilated after I'm done with it. I'll make sure to cut the tape short so that it overlaps, which will then be polished away.

[Jarred]

it'll make your edges finer and hence cleaner and smoother.

just my advice, taht's all.

[VeeDubs]

i might pop around saturday if ur still working on them.

see u friday anyway (if u take all the crap out of your boot throw that rim in so we can check it )

[Mrk_Mickey]

I still appreciate the info Jared mate I just can't afford extra expenses atm (rego...) and I don't think it will matter because we're scratching/polishing the surface on the front anyways. My test wheel will tell though, and if it doesn't work as well as I wanted then I'm definitely gonna wait and get some

Marty, hopefully I'll have painted a wheel in colour by then (even if it's not the best) so I'll bring it along. Hell, even if I don't, I'll probs just wetsand it while everyone is taking long exposure shots on Friday hahaha

[Mrk_Mickey]

I should be stripping the rest of the wheels tonight. If possible, I'm going to whack some colour on my test wheel (even if it does need more primer..) because I want to see what the colour looks like, and whether or not I should go darker.

Hopefully I'll have more progress tonight!

[VeeDubs]

Marty, hopefully I'll have painted a wheel in colour by then (even if it's not the best) so I'll bring it along. Hell, even if I don't, I'll probs just wetsand it while everyone is taking long exposure shots on Friday hahaha

awesomee! we could do a long exposure shot of you scrubbing away so just your hands are a blur. because your such a hard worker!

im excited to see it! i installed my new sub just then

[Mrk_Mickey]

Okay...No more paint stripping.

It no longer works on such small amounts of paint for some reason... once I pay for rego this month I'm going to pay to get them sandblasted (5 of them). Can anyone give me the number of a well priced sandblaster/can anyone get it done for me for cheap?

Despite wasted efforts to get rid of paint, we did more on my first wheel . Second coat of primer went on and this time I painted it so I set the gun up just right it came up an absolute treat! It's really nice and even now, so I think this wheel doesn't necessarily have to be a test wheel.


For this style of wheel - ie multispoked/hard-to-get-to faces - you basically want to set up your spray so that the spray width is about as wide as the spoke depth, and the amount of paint that comes out leaves a *just* solid line on a test piece (like cardboard or something else flat that you can paint onto) without runs or being too dry/transparent. The speed you spray at depends on how much paint you put onto the surface; it's pretty easy to understand how fast you need to go depending on how much paint comes out of your gun .

Painting the wheel is done best by doing it in segments - face, inside of spokes on one edge, inside of spokes on the other, lip, rear of wheel. Just spray it evenly and straight at the surface until the colour you're painting on is solid. Remember, you can quite easily overdo it! - so it's best to leave dry/uneven marks until later.

For the rear of the wheel, I adjusted the gun to give a wider spray pattern (about 70-80 degrees out of the gun nozzle) and a bit more paint. I set the gun so that when spraying paint, it looks like powder whilst in the air, and comes out quite wide. This is best for the back of the wheel as it easily covers the larger areas that don't need as much accuracy.

Pics:











I've been offered a really nice dark metallic paint to use if I want to....what do people think of the charcoal metallic you see on Mazda 3's?




I can either use this colour on its own or mix my audi paint with it. I have a feeling I won't like my audi paint on its own, because it's going to be too light for the comparison with the polished surface.

I'll be finishing this wheel off before starting the others, so that I can keep updating this thread so stay tuned!
Cheers.