Hi everyone, is there any good way to refinish and repaint the wire wheels on my 26 touring car without removing them? they are glossy black now and in good condition. I made the mistake of cleaning them and the tires a few times with that foaming wheel cleaner that you get at auto parts stores but now i notice that it melted some of the paint off in different areas and that there is a yellow paint finish under the gloss black! not sure which color I want to do them in (straw or black) but just thought I'd ask about it!
den
Touch up with a brush. There aren't many shortcuts when it comes down to a nice paint job. It is time consuming and a lot of work to do it "right". I concentrate more on having drivers than show stoppers. I live on a gravel road and have a lot of little kids climbing on them so I don't worry about the paint job. I worry about the price of ice-cream or the Slushy at our local gas station. You have a very nice looking car!
Thank's michael, It is also a driver, looks better in the pic than in person!!!!!! I have let her go cosmetically for awhile now and was thinking about doing some work on her over the winter! The underbody is beginning to show surface rust so I was thinking about ordering some por paint for that, but wasn't sure what to get for the wheels and didn't know if it would be worth my while to remove them or not!
den
Best wayis to remove wheel then tire and go from there. My dad was lazy and instead of removing the tire he let out all the air ,stepped on tire to break bead and used cardboard cut out to fit between tire and rim. If you go this way put the cardboard on both sides before painting or you'll get paint on the tire. Good luck.
PS dad used Rustolium, next time I do it I'll try auto paint .
Dennis
You can paint them with out demounting the tires, take the car put it on jack stands, take off the wheels wash with soap and water, scuff the surface with scotchbrite pad rinse off or wipe with tack cloth, let dry.....let the air out, walk around the beads to break tires lose, now take plastic trash bags cut leinght wise on the seams stuff in on both sides at the beads put just enough air back in tires to hold the plastic, tape all the seams where the plastic overlaps.
Now you can paint with any color you want.....
Get ambitious and take them in to a local/regional tire and wheel center and have them powder-coated.
We have a regional chain called Les Schwab Tires here in the northwest. They have a great reputation among the car guys and do a fast, very reasonably priced job on the wheels.
(I wouldn't necessarily let them do anything else on my car, but they do have the powder-coating down.)
The right way would be to have them sandblasted and powder coated. I have done multiple sets of wheels over the years. I simply drop off the crusty wheel, they sandblast and powder coat the wheel in the color of my choice. Time is too precious to me to be fiddling around with sandpaper and rattle can paint, just to end up with results that turn to crapola in a short time from the abuse wheels receive from the road.