Quick and dirty wheel mods...

[Tremek]

Ever since we picked up the car I thought the alloy wheels looked dumb, so I had a project yesterday afternoon. Plastidip is an amazing thing.

Hopefully this isn't too unsafe. All the stands were 3 ton+.


My mechanic:


Before:


After:








I think it came out alright. I went with about 6 coats of plain flat black, and then did a single coat of pearlizer. Interestingly this came out looking a lot like the anthracite gray I had done on my Mercedes:





As a side effect, on the test drive after putting them back on, I discovered that launch control is strong enough to rotate the tire on the wheel, as the remnants of the overspray were now stretched on the tire. Cool.

Earlier in the week I had also shot the 18" wheels with drag radials I now have for my CTS-V with the flat black, you can see the contrast:

[gixxerboy63]

Color looks REALLY good!

Gixxer- thinks maybe he should have done this to his instead of selling them?

[Tremek]

Considering how abusive our roads are to wheels (not to mention my wife, cough), I'm way more interested in prettying up what I have with $25 in materials and an afternoon of my time versus buying nice wheels. So far said philosophy is working out.

Today I looked at them in the sun and like them even more now - the pearlizer added essentially a metallic flake to it, and while the texture itself is still largely flat/matte, it has some depth, which was my goal. Mission accomplished!

[RickM5x3]

Looks great! Thanks for the pics and writeup. One can of Pearlizer I assume? How many can of flat black? Did you do the inside of the wheel or just area that shows?

[Tremek]

That was about 2.5 cans of black Plastidip for the outside face; I didn't do the interior barrels as I was running out of time, and it won't matter much anyway. I think you would need about 4 cans total to do the insides/inside edge too.

Yes one can of pearlizer, and just one coat per wheel - I laid it down about as thick as I did a coat of black and could see a color change immediately, so in the interest of making them not too shiny or gray, I stuck with the single fogged coat and I like how it turned out. Walmart sells the cans of black for $5.82, and the pearlizer I had ordered for a previous project and never used, I think it's like $10-15 for a can.

One other protip, using an aerosol can trigger does wonders for your ability to distribute the spray.

[HollywoodsX5M]

Did mine in Graphite with matte clear coat

[Tremek]

Nice, I like it - and that looks familiar. Is yours lowered at all?

[HollywoodsX5M]

Originally Posted by Tremek

Nice, I like it - and that looks familiar. Is yours lowered at all?

Which one the red one? No the red one isn't lowered