Anhedonia

OK so i decided to do a write up on how to do this (or atleast how i did it)

Est time to complete..2-3 hours.

What you need:
Hose (any source of water will work, but i found using a hose to clean my wheels made it much easier to blast away the majority of the junk)
400 grit sand paper
Wheel primer ( try and get a viscous one, or one for filling in scratches or dents, available at pep boys//autozone)
Wheel paint, whatever color you want. you can get it offline, or again at autozone or pepboys, although the two aforementioned retailers carry a limited selection of colors//finish's
Masking tape, 3m blue painters tape works the best, make sure you get the multi surface one otherwise youll get some paint leaks onto your tires..
Beer (or soda.. food, whatever you prefer.)

First. take the wheels off the car (sounds dumb, you never know)

Second: Wash the living FUCK out of them. scrub scrub and scrub. you want to get all the dirt grime and dust off of the surface you are going to paint. if not, youll get some bumpy shitty paint that will probably chip and or flake where the dirt or whatever is that you painted over. DO NOT use any kind of wheel cleaner that leaves some sort of residual polish. this will mess with the primers ability to adhere to the alloy.

Third: using the sand paper, rough up the surface of the wheel slightly. were not talking anything major, just a light sand over the entire wheel

Fourth: rinse down the wheels again to get rid of anything the sanding might have kicked loose. wait for the wheels to dry.

Five: once the wheels are dry, go ahead and mask off the tires from the wheel using the tape, if your painting wheels not mounted to tires, then you lucked out. just make sure to not get any significant amount of pain onthe inside of the wheel where the tire bead would mount to. not sure it would do anything, but who wants to risk it

Six: lay down a coat of primer, make sure to go evenly and coat the entire wheel. try your best to fill in the dents/ dings without over sprazying and causing drips. If you do get drips, take some very high grit sand paper and LIGHTLY sand down the drip. repeat until the entire wheel looks evenly coated. i did two coats and it worked perfectly fine.

Seven: now the fun begins, using a steady hand and slow movements, coat each wheel with desired paint. the more coats you do, the more resiliant the paint will be. make sure to give the paint at least 15 minutes to dry between each coat, you want to make sure your not putting wet paint on wet paint. this will cause drips.

this is after two coats:


this is after 4



I chose not to paint my center caps because I personally like the way they look against the GM.

finished product mounted on my car (I let them dry for 3 hours after the last coat before i mounted them)



another option you could explore that I chose not to is finishing them with a clear coat. this would give them a mch glossier look. while mine do refract light, there more on the Matte side of things.

Thats pretty much it. the longer you wait for them to dry, the better your results will be. im yet to stand the test of time, but for sub 20$ you cant go wrong with this, even if they do need a re-spray down the road.

South Jersey CL

nice job. you think this will work for the valve cover too?

97BlackAckCL

iTrader: (6)

There are plenty of diy's on here for vc's

Anhedonia

yeah, the only difference would be using a high heat paint instead of wheel paint. make sure its got ceramic particles in it. otherwise it will smoke right off the second your engine gets hot, and noone likes an engine bay fire lol

hOnU

@Shadow: don't get me wrong, you did a great job!! but you should pick up some gunmetal center caps, your stock ones kinda stick out a bit imo

97BlackAckCL

iTrader: (6)

Get some gunmetal ones from an MDX

Anhedonia

i will begin my search!

cl-baller201

Kool DIY ... how bout getting the scratches out of rims? How would you go about doing that ?

Anhedonia

best way is to try and sand down the scratch without indenting the are at all, then fill it with primer. i had some pretty hideous scratches on mine from previous owner. it seriously looked like someone went at it with a belt sander. a couple of layers of primer and you would never know now.

spencer_homer

nice write up. 3 hours is way fast. with my spoke count, and design, i probably spend 3 hours taking off the wheels and preping them

Anhedonia

haha yeah.. mine was fairly simple.. prep work was pretty easy too. sanding was the most annoying part cus i have big hands and my fingers didnt fit all to well between the damn split spokes haha

a2ndragoon89

omg nice! i'ma try this hopefully over spring break!!! bronze ftwww

Wonseok

Cool~!

Eband27

lol, guys, i wish i wasn't a perfectionist. I spent a whole week prepping my rims. I sanded the whole rim from the inside out.. lol.

a2ndragoon89

pics!!

Berksallday

I was thinking of painting these wheels. Do I need to do anything different to the aluminum finish on these or just follow the same steps that you have up.

Anhedonia

just sand away. you don't really need to remove the finish completley, you just need to rough up the surface enough that the primer has a porous surface to fill and adhere to.

jaredbhouston

iTrader: (1)

they look good! i might do my 3.0 wheels soon, i'm addicted to painting stuff.

97'CL2.2

i have done this before on my other cars and found aircraft stripper works really well to get the old finish off. just spray it on and wait about 5 mins until you see the finish start to bubble up, then take a plastic putty knife and lightly scrape the old finish off. this makes the sanding much less tedious as you will only need minimal sanding after you wash the stripper off. just my .02

Anhedonia

hey blackack you think you could add 972.2's last bit of info to the DIY? thats some good advice..

RemieGino14

I'm thinking about doing this to my rims, not sure yet, cause I want to use these rims when I start dropping and lowering my car.




Not sure of a choice of color, but I was thinking something to match the color of the car. Theres a gash on one of the rims, I was hoping that the paint can cover that up. Any opinions on this?

- RemieGino14 -

tunit

I just did this today...They look soo sick

97BlackAckCL

iTrader: (6)

Fixed your pics for you, lookin good man, I like the gm grill as well

tunit

Thanks i did it with the A on the back too, and while i am typing this it is going to be on the exhaust tips...

Anhedonia

just make sure you use a high temperature paint on those tips...

tunit

Alright guys i changed the rims a little bit and added some clear coat...just finished.


What do you guys think?

97BlackAckCL

iTrader: (6)

The wheels and center caps look great, those A emblems could use some work though

tunit

yeah i might end up sanding them down and doing it again...

PATRICK3.0

Thinkin about paintin my 99 3.0 wheels gunmetal, but I could also just wait until I need new tires (prolly closer to winter time) and get them powder coated black pretty cheap through my work. The wheels have a lot of scratches and nicks from the previous owner and would probably be a lot of work sanding and filling. I am also having trouble deciding if the black on black or gunmetal on black will look better. Any suggestions?

tunit

If you are going for the night rider look then black on black. But personally i would do gunmetal and black...Just my opinion

AlexAcura

What color do you think would go best with the green cl? original, gun metal, or black i just got a 98 120k miles 5spoke cl rims

Cocoa

iTrader: (2)

Here's a picture of the stockies in black.

AlexAcura

i think it might look good with the green as well.. should i go flat black or more of a shiney look? and what sand paper to get for deeep rim scratches

Cocoa

iTrader: (2)

I used semi gloss black spray paint from home depot. I started off with rough sand paper, and then finished them off with a very fine sand paper with water to smooth out the spokes before priming the wheels.