wushunut

er...I guess I'll let the pics speak for themselves.

NorCalBugEye

iTrader: (11)

nice, i like them! the red lip gives it a good touch.

03_Impreza_Al

iTrader: (46)

its different. I have a neutral feeling towards it. Lower it y0!

AVAWRX

iTrader: (6)

nice work!

cowg

iTrader: (1)

Nice job-truly.It would be great if you'd share with us the paint details,like what kind of paint,any special technique,or who did it. Hard,Easy,expense?

wushunut

Thanks.

This took about three days total to do. I did it during the week, pretty much after work and stopped after sunset, so I didn't have a lot of time. The first two days were pretty much dedicated to prep work. Put the car up on jackstands, cleaned the wheels with Eagle One Etching Mag Cleaner(??) inside and out. Followed that with dish washing soap and water.

Then I sanded the wheels with 320 grit all around. The sanding is probably the most painful part of the whole experience (masking too!). That took pretty much the last part of the first day and the entire second day. There are so many nooks and crannies on the BBS that the sanding just takes forever. After the sanding I washed the wheels again to detergent and water. Dry.

Then I masked of the tire. Tip: If you use any kind of tire shine product, make sure you get it completely off your tire before proceeding any further. 1) It is impossible to get any masking type to stick on the tire and 2) it leaves a black residue over anything it touches...including your wheels and clothes. Unfortunately, I know this from experience. After masking (couldn't do the index card trick because, for some reason, I couldn't get the cars to fit between the wheel and the tire) I sprayed two coats of Dupli-Color Sandable Primer. Oh...before applying the primer, I filled in my curb gashes (rash) with some metal epoxy, sanded that down and washed the wheels again. Coupled with the primer, I think it filled in the gashes quite nicely.

I then masked of everything but the lip. Sprayed about three coats of Dupli-Color engine enamel in Dodge Viper Indian Red. You need to give that at least a day to dry before you even THINK about applying masking tape there so you can paint the rest of the wheel (again...I had to learn that the hard way). When I lifted the masking on one lip (where I applied the masking to early) bits of paint would come off with the tape. Crap! Anyways, Instead of redoing the whole thing, I took the spray can and sprayed some paint into a little container and used a paint brush to fill in those gaps. It worked well enough that I can't tell where the original paint lifted off.

After masking the lip I then sprayed 2 light coats and 1 medium coat (per the directions) of the Dupli-Color white wheel coating. I followed that with 2 coats of the Dupli-color clear coat wheel coating.

All in all...I'm glad I did it for the experience. I'm not thrilled by the finish so I'll probably go back and wet sand the wheels with 1000 grit to smooth things out and then put a couple of more coats of paint on to get a nice smooth finish. The color came out quite nicely and looks good and rich.

I'm a little nervous about durability but Dupli-color supposedly "track tested" these paints so I'll see soon enough if that means anything. It's a pretty easy job but it takes time. If anything, "patience" is the number one requirement for this DIY. Rush anything and it'll just look like crap and you'll have to go back and re-do certain steps. On an scale of 1 - 5 (from easy to difficult), I'd give this a "2" for the novice DIYer. I'm a novice myself and I didn't think it was that difficult.

Oh... I bought 4 cans of paint (only used 2) at ~$5 a can, two cans of primer, one can of engine enamel, one can of clear, and sand paper. Total cost was around $50.