This is what I came up with in photoshop last night. Pretty decent rendering of what it *should* look like. Using Duplicolor's Graphite color wheel coating.



Might also do the center caps in a red to match the body paint.
What do you guys think?

Oh, that ugly faded graphic is gone now. (Yay for 3M Stripe-off wheel, contractor's solvent and a plastic putty knife)

 

This afternoon I am doing the same thing with the same paint on my stock 82 wheels.
I think you should do it.

 

So far I'm 80% convinced to do it. I do have a little curb damage I need to clean up before I paint though.
Does anyone know how tough this wheel coating is? Would a tire machine mess up the outer edge around the bead?

 

Duplicolor's Graphite is more of gun metal color than the semigloss black color you have in your shopped pic.

 

He's right, I painted a few things using that paint back in the day on my 2nd gen and didn't realize just how gray it was until it completely dried.

I would make sure you like the gunmetal look with the red before pulling the trigger.

I would also not paint the center caps red - IMO that looks a little "ricer".

Fink

 

I dig the idea and they'd likely still look great in gunmetal.

 

My friend did his and liked them, too bad this is the only pic i have though.

 

I would recommend going to this website:
http://www.rimpainter.com/
I was thinking about painting my wheels black a while back but I wasn't sure what exactly I would need and how to go about doing it. I also wanted a semi-gloss black instead of a gloss black or flat black. I talked to Christian at rimpainter and he actually put together a custom kit for me. The kits come with everything you need to get the job done properly and detailed instructions so you can't mess it up. I painted my wheels about 6 months ago and have had the tires balanced and rotated twice, and they still look awesome! I will post some pics when I get home from work.

 

Painted my 1st gen wheels with duplicolor satin. They came out better than I expected. I did media blast the rims 1st and that helped.

 

As promised here are some pics of how my wheels came out. I got the kit from rimpainter.com and Christian hooked me up with a semi-gloss kit.

 

Oh wow. I must have gotten the color match a little off in photoshop.... lol
I'll have to re-match and see what it looks like.

Oh and Fink - don't worry, I won't do the center caps. A few guys at work have turned me off to that idea.

 

i thought about doing mine too. i just haven't had a time when i can let my truck sit for a full day for the paint to dry. i have lots of oxidation on the wheels and need to sand them a bit then i'm using rustoleum self etching primer then some black engine enamel then a clear coat. i did my spare tire with it and i think i turned out pretty good.

 

The steel wheels don't look too bad black. If I could find a full set of 'em I'd just put a black set of steels on my Runner.
So working around the fact that my computer is really slow today I was able to get a new rendering with the more grey graphite. Here's a comparison:
Graphite(ish):


Satin Black(ish):


Notice the side stripe is gone I think I spent 3 hours the other evening polishing the crap out of the thing after I took the stripe off wheel to it.

 

If you're gonna paint 'em, go with cheap walmart flat black. Is it great paint? No. But it will stick just fine, and by using a flat black as opposed to something shiny, when you do F- them up on the trail or something, it's real easy to touch up. Give it a shot, it dries and you're back to black again. If you use the shiny stuff, it takes a lot more blending to make it look right.

I did the same thing on my bumpers, mirrors, door handles, etc... everything else chrome on my truck. I'll beat it up, scrape it up, whatever. It doesn't really matter. It only takes about 30 seconds to fix it if it starts to bug me.

 

I painted the stock steel rims on my 90 rustoleum flat black. One coat of primer, then 2 coats of flat black and they look great. No need to get expensive paint IMO.

 

I've been thinking of doing this for a while, heres some of the pictures I've found while searching:














Hope that helps. I think I'm eventually gonna do it to mine.

 

Yeah, I'm definitely going to go for the flat black now. It would be cool to see what the first picture looked like actually on the truck.

 

Any updates? Did you getr done? I am thinking of going this route with my white 93 Runner

 

Haven't gotten this done yet. It's getting kind of cold around my parts too so I think this project might have to wait till the spring, or if we get a warm day - which in VA, isn't unlikely in the middle of December...

 

i think i am going to paint mine on my new 4 runner its white should look good