does anyone know of a paint that matches the silver on the center caps? mine have seen some weather in the past 10 years

 

I just repainted mine on my 02. I used a product by ?Duplicolor? I think... Got it at autozone and its just called wheel silver. Assuming that your year is the same as mine its a good match. I think the wheel silver is a standard wheel color. Also make sure you get some of the wheel clear coat or else it will be more of a matte finish.

I took mine off and sanded them with some 350 grit paper. Sand the areas that are peeling so they are nice and smooth, then the rest just scuff it so the paint will stick. Then I cleaned them with some Dawn dish soap (removes oil and wax etc) if you have denatured alcohol it would be better, just don't get it on the center caps and test it on a small area. Then I masked the centers to keep them chrome from getting painted. Then do SUPER LIGHT COATS of the color. That plastic does not like paint and it will ripple super easy so I did like 6 light coats before I got coverage. I followed up with 3 clear coats and they look brand new.

hope that helps

 

I just went through and painted mine black... although it might not be what your looking for does add a "different" touch to it and stands out a little more from other 4runners... although i usually dont even have my centercaps on

 

Can we get some pics of the silver and black caps on your trucks?? I'd like to see the difference as my center caps look like CRAP!! I was wanting to paint my wheels all black using that walkthrough in the tech section, but I like to keep my options open. I do see it as being much cheaper than buying new wheels though!

I think that if I get new wheels I'll be afraid to go ding them up so I'm gonna run on my old stock wheels for a while longer.

Thanks!

 

it shows it a little bit, if you wanna see better pictures i can take some later on and PM them to ya...




oh mine is also a 98, i just love showing it off!

 

I did my center caps last year but I made the mistake of using model car spray paint and the UV rays yellowed them in less than a year so lesson learned so this time around I wanted something different so I went with a charcoal metallic Duplicolor spray but have yet to decide if I want to fill in the "T" with red but probably will do it soon.

Here's the Testors paint I used on them last year which looked good for a year


And here's the newly painted caps

 

Heres Mine

 

is a darn close match, easiest thing I have found to cover the toyota emblem is
liquid soap applied with a paint brush or qtip

 

So let me get this straight. You can fill the Toyota symbol depression with liquid soap, then spray paint right over top of it. Then after the paint dries, you just wash the soap away, and you have an unpainted symbol?

That's pretty slick! Thanks for the tip.

 

If that works then you could fill the "T" with whatever color you wanted,let it dry,cover it with the soap and then spray the rest of the cap which would be so much easier than other methods and should almost look OEM.

 

Exactly what I was thinking! Previously, I painted the symbol by hand with a tiny paintbrush. It turned out alright, but what a PITA.

 

On the top pic with the red I used the pen tip and boobbed the paint into the "T" then just used paint thinner to remove the little bit of overlap but the paint on the main part of the cap must be fully dried and cured so the thinner won't effect it using a very light touch.

I'm definetly going to try the soap method tho' with my lastest version of my caps.