painting wheels

[CharlieBucket]

so i have painted wheels before and they came out nice. even thou sold my 280zx i keep the wheels and redid them in alloy color and they look great. they are still sitting in the yard, but they look great. i sanded the whole wheel and re-painted. but with my 620 wheels it's not so easy. they are steel and rusty. should i attemt to sand them or is there another way? i want to them silver or black and then shine my caps up real nice.

 

here's a pic of the 280zx wheels before i re-did. stupid q?.. how hard would it be to convert to 4 lug and run these? really dumb probely but they are datto rims and i love the way they look. do you guys think they would look good?

[pope_face]

Those Z wheels are pretty slick... as for using the four lug on the truck hub, it's doable, but it'll require adaptors... most people are against adaptors because of the extra strain they put on the hubs, but it's really your choice. Just make sure that your replacement wheels won't rub at full turn... assuming everything else is kept the same, the new wheels will need backspacing that's equivilant to stock plus the width of the adaptor...

 

As far as I know, you ought to be able to track down a reasonable set of adaptors for a couple hundred bucks... not sure if it's worth it to you.

 

As for your steelies... you could strip the rust and paint off, clean them up, and repaint them, but you might still have pits from rust. It really depends on how rare stock wheels are in your area. Kiznook was giving a set of six away... I think around here people can't get rid of them fast enough. Not sure what it's like out there. You might be better off just picking up a decent set and repainting those.

[tnip]

i agree that you should look into picking up some cleaner ones to work on, then again, you don't really know how badly pitted, it at all, these wheels are until you get into them a lil. if it was me, i would do a test area, see how that looks after you work on it and then decide if you need to get another set or these are worth refinishing. have you seen the at home electrolysis (sp?). i've never seen wheels done that way but it would allow you to get into the tight areas alot easier than doing it all by hand, even if you just start it in the bath and then finish them up by hand. and if you're wanting a really smooth finish and it's pitted, you could always treat them like a body panel and use filler, or the sandable primer stuff to fill in the minor stuff, and then paint them just like you would on the body of the car.

[CharlieBucket]

so use some kind of rust stripping agent on them? the caps will go on top, some the pitting might not bother me to much, if it isn't too bad.

[Pacific coast Datsun]

Naval jelly may take some of the rust off, brush it on & let it set for a few minutes then work it in using a small wire brush then rinse off. Or just go in 1st off using a wire wheel on a drill motor & take your time. That will remove 99% of the crap & give you a nice surface to primer / paint.

[Cruzn620]

if the pitting is shallow, you'd be surprised what a high build sandable primer will fill up. other than that, you are going to be looking at bondo, but i have a feeling bondo would crack like crazy on a wheel with all the vibrations that are transmitted through them. do a test area and let us know what you find. if they are bad, let me strip one of my stockers down and if mine are better, we can make a switch.

[CharlieBucket]

if the pitting is shallow, you'd be surprised what a high build sandable primer will fill up. other than that, you are going to be looking at bondo, but i have a feeling bondo would crack like crazy on a wheel with all the vibrations that are transmitted through them. do a test area and let us know what you find. if they are bad, let me strip one of my stockers down and if mine are better, we can make a switch.

 

 

sounds good man, i need to build a sandbaster like mklotz did. i'll take some pics when i start on the job.

[73super]

Is this going to be a show truck? If not sure, just sand and paint! They'll turn out great.. I did mine when I pulled them outta junk yard and they were in pretty bad shape. Use a good primer then just put as many coats as you need to fill them in.

 

Good luck! Have fun and be Kewl! :cool:

[sjeff64]

do you have an air compressor? if you do and have a Harbor Freight store close get there spot blaster gun and some abrassive