Wheel painting

[Pecky1964]

I am after a little advice regarding touching up my 294 rims on my E89. I want to do it myself but need a little advice. The rims are 95% very good apart from a few places where there is corrosion. My plan is to remove the paint where there is corrosion and get nice and smooth surface ready to paint. Then to spray the small area only with the same colour paint as the original. Then to prepare and lacquer the whole rim. I am not sure if these would have been sprayed originally with a water based paint and if so do I have to use water based again? I would rather not. Any advice greatly received.
Ps the reason for not paying £300-£400 to get a professional job is that I want to use the money to replace the run flats...... can’t do both.....

[Busterboo]

Replace the runflats now, then you can enjoy the car while you save the money to have the wheels refinished.

The alternative, driving round on pretty wheels with crap tyres, makes no sense.

[Pecky1964]

Busterboo, thanks for that. Swapping to non run flats is definitely the priority but I really want to have a go at making the wheels look their best too. I will get a lot of satisfaction in doing them myself..........

[greg81]

Busterboo, thanks for that. Swapping to non run flats is definitely the priority but I really want to have a go at making the wheels look their best too. I will get a lot of satisfaction in doing them myself..........

I refurbed an mv2 wheel myself once. It was slow sanding it all by hand but it actually turned out pretty good! Very satisfying in the end.

I didn't get any pictures of the end result unfortunately but this was half way through. If you've got the patience you should do the whole wheel.

[Ouroux71]

I re-painted my previous Audi A4 alloys.

Wheels removed - you can't do a good job when they are vertical on the car and it is a whole lot more comfortable doing them off the vehicle
I lightly sanded them all over with a fine grade paper and steel wool.

The damages/gouges were then filled with araldyte glue. Yes you read correctly. They were then sanded down to get the orginal shape, wheel curve. The paint sticks to the glued areas without any issues.

Once cleaned with white spirt and bone dry in to masking. Using newspaper or thin plastic sheet and quality masking tape (the blue stuff) I fed the tape between the wheel and tyre and protected the tyres from overspray. If you are changing the tyres then by all means remove the old tyres but it isn't necessary.

I then sprayed 2 light primer coats

Then once dry (they dry quickly) it was several light coats of silver paint.

Next day I did about 6 coats of laquer spray to get that wet gloss look.

Finished result was to my eye perfect

Key to success is a light spray at each step. Small damages can be tackled at the area with blending in.


I took some photos but the final result looked better in reality:

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[weegeoff]

Dell boy would have been proud of those wheels on his Reliant.

[javis20]

Wow, they look really good. Thanks for the share.

[Ouroux71]

Dell boy would have been proud of those wheels on his Reliant.

Very good - There were four I just only had a photo of three whilst the last one dryed.....

[Pecky1964]

Many thanks for sharing..... I will tackle mine over the next week or so

[Ouroux71]

Many thanks for sharing..... I will tackle mine over the next week or so

You'll need a bit of time, a bit of space and some money for tape and paint/laquer. I needed 1 tin of undercoat, 2 tins of silver and 2 of laquer, and 2 rolls of the blue masking tape. Plus some araldyte if needed to fill, or perhaps it's just a light sanding for you? - if you can get these in bigger quantity then it might be cheaper. Maybe £50 for 4 wheels? Good luck

[obewan]

Ouroux71, They look excellent I bet you were pleased with the results - not to mention the satisfaction
I've seen a tip/trick on YouTube where they used playing cards pushed in between the wheel rim and tyre.
It seemed a quick way to mask off. I appreciate you'd still need to cover the rest of the tyre

Whats your thoughts on this, would it work in your opinion?
Or has anyone else tried it?

[Andrew Sheldon]

A job well done...They look really good..