Hey Everybody,


Thought I would post up another thread about painting rims, just to give ya'll some options when wanting to spruce up your truck. Been running them like this for a few months now without any chipping... only time will tell.


These aluminum rims were rather beat up, so I decided to use rustoleum hammered texture spray paint. Gives the rims a nice gun color look and helps to cover up all the imperfections in the surface of the rim.


I cleaned up with rims with a tire and rim cleaner from oreillys, then followed up with brake cleaner just to degrease them. Then I taped everything off with masking tape I did not want paint to get on. And this is the end result:





You can see the slight rough surface the hammered texture leaves behind, but I like it. Those silver squares are the original aluminum showing through. You can get even more creative and tape of other parts of the rim and paint them a different color too, but I didn't want to get too crazy. I did play around with painting those squares red, but it started to look a little too homemade and ghetto, so I left them as is.


I finished the paint with a duracolor clear coat that you simply spray on, available at oreillys as well. hopefully the clear coat will help it last longer.


Hope you all enjoyed. Thanks!

 

Looks different, i like the look.

 

Just painted my stock steel wheels, I think it looks 69% better.

 

Wagon wheels , black.

 

I'm thinking of painting the wheels on my Tundra, as the factory coating is peeling, and I can't afford powder coating. Are there any tricks or insights that I should consider?

 

Just google "painting wheels" or "painting rims." There are 10,000 threads out there for various models or trucks and cars. The best tip I found is to use a deck of cards, I used flash cards my son had, to put between the tire and wheel. It saves a whole lot of taping. There are great wheel paints. I used black Rustoleum to clean up a spare tire and it looks better than I thought it would. Just be sure to clean the wheel thoroughly. It's one of the cheapest improvements you can make for the cost of two cans of spray paint (for four wheels).


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Love that card trick. As a precaution I would still use a thin width tape before to hand to prevent spray getting between them. Also go to the extra effort to completely cover your tires from overspray or wax them before hand to make removal easier.

Get them very clean, treat any rust you find, mask them up and spray. If you can provide a hot box to cure them in, to a point hotter and faster will make them tougher.

before
After

 

Wheels look good!
On the aluminum wheels it's always a good idea to use an etching primer as a base coat.

 

I used Plastidip on my spare to protect it from the salt spray in the winter and it turned out great. I have a buddy who has all his rims Plastidipped and they look great, just another alternative to spray paint.

 

After sanding mine well I sprayed etching primer and truck bed liner

 

Spray paint from the can has gotten so many incredible options over the years. Seems like you just have to be ready to research since some of the old brands have changed their basic formulas to be weaker (as far as some cursory research says, at least? Possibly EPA regulations). Perhaps a heat gun would help (once it's tacky but still curing) if hot box is out of reach.

I've been really curious about the high-temp/ceramic formula sprays...

 

easy and cheap

 

Need to hit mine with white. The guy i bought the truc from decided to spray um silver. He had um bone stock white then made this move during the talks for the truck. Boooo now i need to redo them.

 

Started like this. Some corrosion, old tarnished clear coat.

Stripping old clear coat

Was going to polish them instead just resprayed them.

With more patience and detail I’d like to polish the lips and paint in between spokes an accent color