Painting rims

[david-b]

Ok so I got my bumper on last night and it looks like a car again. Pics in my project thread tonight. But now I want to make the rest of the car a little better. The thing that ruins it, besides the sun cancer, are the rims. I know what rims I want, but I want to drop it and do all this other stuff at the same time, which comes to about $1500. Don't have that kind of cash to spend on wheels at this moment.

So, I want to take my wheels (they're not stock but they may as well be), strip them down, and paint them. What would the best way to do this for rims? I'm thinking that taking a grinder/dremol and just scraping off all the crap and then cleaning them really good but what paint then? It seems like the finish or paint that was on there before is coming off and is why they look like ass. Any ideas?

[vanilla gorilla]

I took my stock SRT-4 wheels and sanding them down really good with 400 grit until there was no shine left. Then I washed and cleaned them well. I then coated the sidewall of the tires with a heavy application of baby oil so that the paint wouldnt stick to the tires. Then I painted them with Flat black Duplicolor engine enamel. I have found that it lays down very smooth and is durable as well. I got sideswiped the day after I painted them. It tore the side of the car up pretty good, but didnt take the paint off the rims, only lightly scuffed them!
Anyways, the end result was very good and they look like they came from the factory that way. I sanded down my factory eclipse wheels to do gloss black but havent painted them yet.

[david-b]

Cool. I looked it up and there's quite a few articles and how-tos about it and it doesn't seem that difficult. Seems like that's the route I'm going to probably go, hopefully before the meet. I think that would be a nice addition in making the car look better. Let me tell you the bumper is gorgeous and makes the rest of the car look like ass now. So any little thing will help

[Thor06]

If you search under Scott's username (cant remember it offhand) he did a pretty good writeup about when he painted his rims. I think they make special wheel paint, thats what I am going to use when I redo my wheels.

[vanilla gorilla]

blacksrt or somethin like that

[Blackcrow64]

I'm sure he is still running around the SRT4 section... Maybe give him a look up. I haven't talked to/heard from him in a long ass time...