How to refurbish your wheels the hard way

[McDoof]

I posted this up to a certain extent on the Aus Liberty forums a while back, but thought it might help here too.

So at the end of last summer I decided that my wheels were looking a bit average. The previous owner had the refurbished at some point, but the job looked a bit sub standard. The clearcoat and paint is peeling off and there are a few curb marks on some of the wheels.

I decided to undertake a DIY refurbishment. I took 1 wheel at a time. Had the tyre removed and then sanded them down, prep and repaint.

I ordered some custom paint from Colourworks in Auckland, who have made me up 4 cans of paint, 4 cans of clearcoat and I added 2 cans of primer. This should have covered the 5 wheels but due to some stupidity on my side I ended up with only enough to do 4 wheels.

I tried a different painting method for each wheel to see which gave the best results. Strangely enough it was the first wheel that worked the best. So here is my recommended method.

First things first. Do this in summer when it is hot. The last wheel took much longer to cure because it was colder by the time I got to it.

1. Wash the wheel with hot soapy water and rinse it well. Make sure it is 100% dry before any paint gets near it.

2. One thin coat to start it all off. Making sure that all parts get a least some primer on them. Then do 3 coats of primer that are a bit thicker waiting at least 2 hours in between. Then let the primer dry overnight and sand it lightly with 1000 grit wet paper so that it is completely smooth. This is where your final finish is decided.

3. Wash the wheel with hot soapy water again. Make sure it's dry. Then about 4 or 5 thinner coats of paint, making sure that you let them dry enough between coats otherwise you will get runs. Let the last coat of paint dry for a day then wash and dry the wheel to get rid of any loose particles.

4. Apply 2 or 3 coats of clearcoat. Leaving time to dry in-between to get it to set properly. These need to be slightly thicker coats to get the paint to gloss over. If you apply too little paint you won't get the smooth finish

Wheel No1 is the spare. It looks to be in fairly good condition but needs to match the rest. Sort of the test wheel I guess

The wheel before the refurb. Only a few minor marks on the wheel. No curbing. Should be easy right?

Sanding back

After sanding it back

It seems even this wheel had been repainted a few times. I counted around 8 layers of paint and primer. Black, grey, silver, repeat.

It took me about 2 hours of hand sanding using a 350 grit wet paper. I did the inside a bit too so that this wheel should look almost new when I am done.

Even in person this sanded layered paint job looks trippy

Priming

So after sanding the wheel back a bit to get rid of any imperfections in the paint etc I washed it with very hot soapy water to get rid of all of the remaining dirt on the wheel

I created a bit of a makeshift spray booth in my garage using some cardboard boxes.

The the priming begins

The first coat I put on was just a very thin coat to get it to bind to the sanded surface

After 2 more coats you can see that the primer has a bit of fuzzy finish. I think this is in part due to the consistency of the primer, but I think I also was a bit far away from the surface when I sprayed

I ended up doing a total of 4 coats of primer. Then I sanded it back a bit with 1000 grit wet paper. As I sanded it I just ran my fingers around the bits I had sanded to find any more rough areas. The end result is a nice smooth primed surface.

Ready for some paint

Painting

I was really looking forward to seeing what the colour would come out like.

The first coat I did was quite thin in order to get it to set quickly and bind to the primer. Thin coats = no paint runs. Still got pretty good coverage

After a few more coats you can again see a bit of a fuzzy finish on the paint here. In this case it was just some of the paint dust that had settled on the surface and it pretty much all rubbed off with a dry cloth after the 4th or 5th coat had dried.

Here we have the paint part completed. If I was going for a bit of a matte finish, then this would be the end of the wheel

Just a bit of a close up of the painted finish

Seeing as I was going for a bit more of a stock looking finish, I carried on and did about 4 or 5 coats of clearcoat to get that really shiny look

All I can say I'm glad I did. The wheel looks amazing.

The finished first wheel fitted to the car. You can see how much darker than stock it really is

Time to start the second wheel

This one is probably the worst one. The reason I decided to do this in the first place. It looked terrible. There is some light curbing on this one, but the paint job is the real problem. There was about half of the clearcoat peeled off and bits of the paint are peeling. I can probably rant on about how much I hated this wheel :angry2:

The results as before are outstanding when you consider what this wheel looked like to begin with.

I did things a little differently this time though. The sanding was much the same as the first wheel, except that this one had a thick, rock hard coat of clearcoat. I found that peeling it off with a Stanley blade was the best way to get it off.

I then sanded down the bit of curbing that the wheel had. So that there just tiny little scratches left. The primer should take care of the rest

Again many layers of paint on this wheel. I found that the last layer of paint under the clearcoat was rubbish, which is why the whole thing was peeling. I made sure that I got it all off

I got a bit more heavy handed with the primer this time to try and get a smoother initial finish. It seems to have worked and the little scratches have been filled in nicely

All primed up. If you are getting the tyre off it is worth making sure you get the primer wrapping around the edge properly. It makes for a nice finish after sanding

I found these corners quite difficult to sand and I had to go back and re-do them a few times to get them nice and smooth. I ended up reshaping the end of a screwdriver and wrapped it in sandpaper to try and get the right shape.

The completed wheel is again a thing of beauty

I was happy to get back onto my Eagle F1 in this corner. The spare wheel is a horrendous Neuton NT5000. It seems to grip OK, but the road noise and ride quality is not good

The 3rd Wheel

The 3rd wheel has just about broken my spirit.

Sanding took ages due to the clearcoat being made of ROCK!!

Anyway, I got it done. Then I painted it as per the other wheels. Then applied the clearcoat as per the other wheels. At this point I managed to put my thumb into the wet clearcoat. A nice big fat thumbprint right there in the paint. :angry2:

So I figured I could just sand back the bit of clear that I had touched. But that just left a slightly lighter spot on the wheel even after a new coat of clear.

So I painted a bit of the main paint over the spot with not good results. It split and looked like an old lady's face, it sort of melted off.

OK I was getting a bit frustrated at this point and decided to sand the whole surface of the mostly immaculate wheel and spray over it again.

It looked OK during the spray but when I came back to put on another coat it had gone back to looking like saggy skin. So it looks like it needs a full strip again.

So long story short. I dropped the wheel into the local acid dipping place to get it back as bare metal so I could start again. I just couldn't face having to sand it all back again. This is why I did not have enough pain left in the end to do the 5th wheel

I got my wheel back from the acid dipping and it looked pretty good. It appears that these are sand cast wheels.

The problem with dipping is that it costs $60 a wheel and needs a lot more primer to get the surface smooth

I got a bit lazy with photos on this wheel so no progress photos, but it looks pretty good

So on to the 4th wheel

While I liked the ease of having the wheel dipped, I was on a tight budget so I forged ahead at home. I have light duty compressor at home and a simple SCA sandblasting gun and some garnet that I had left over from a bit of a previous de-rusting job I did on my old car. So in order to avoid the frustration of sanding all the little grooves I used the sandblaster to clean these out. I tried giving the whole wheel a go, but its still slow going and I was running out of blasting garnet.

This is what we get

I then carried on as usual with a 300ish grit wet paper to sand the rest down. (again a bit lazy on the pics but it looks the same as the wheel one and 2 after sanding it down)

After all of the previous work I have figured out the perfect way to apply the primer now.

One thin coat to start it all off. Making sure that all parts get a least some primer on them. Then do 3 coats of primer that are a bit thicker waiting at least 2 hours in between. Then let the primer dry overnight and sand it lightly with 1000 grit wet paper so that it is completely smooth

While I was at it. I primed the centre caps. I gave them a really good clean in really hot soapy water (dish soap) Then gave them the same treatment. One thin coat and then just 2 thicker coats of primer

The other thing I have learned is to find a suitable work surface when sanding and cleaning. I seems a bit odd, but I find the top of a 240l wheelie bin very good. Its at a great height for not hurting your back and it holds the wheel in place nicely

Then washed everything down with hot soapy water again.

The lesson here is that there are no easy fixes with this stuff. If you make a little bit of a mess of it then you have to start again and do it right.

The finished product

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[Kiwi_Fozze]

Cheers for the write up, I'm currently going through the hassle of repainting a set of pre facelift spec b rims, and looking at my options in regards to stripping them back. I've filed back all the curving, and have some filler to pack out the worst bits (there were some deep gouges)

How much did all the paint end up costing you? I've got 3 cans of filler primer, and the place I got them from is just down the road, but I do want a customised gunmetal finish so will have to get them made up

[McDoof]

Cost me $200 for all the paint, primer and clearcoat. Was a bit more expensive due to picking a custom paint so they had to mix the paint and put it in cans for me.

[Kiwi_Fozze]

Tbh that's not too bad

[SpeedySub]

That looks really god. Very impressed, would it be easy just to get them sand/bead blasted to tidy them up? I suppose its time vs money on that one. I now have a set of spare rims that I was thinking of tidying up. This gives me hope that it will look good in the end.

[McDoof]

 SpeedySub said:

That looks really god. Very impressed, would it be easy just to get them sand/bead blasted to tidy them up? I suppose its time vs money on that one. I now have a set of spare rims that I was thinking of tidying up. This gives me hope that it will look good in the end.

Yes, I think if I ever did this again I would get them media blasted. I found the acid dip a bit too aggressive on the wheel. I'm really happy I did this though. Makes the car look so much better.