alright, you can go "like" or "dislike" my wheels in the other thread, but this one is going to be dedicated to the how-to of painting your wheels. Fitfreak, nor myself are responsible for anything you do to yourself, your car, or your wheels.

step 1: get all your supplies (soap and water, scouring pad/sandpaper, tack cloth/prep wipe, acetone, primer, wheel paint, clearcoat, index cards, and painter's tape)

step 2: remove your wheels

step 3: clean your wheels. you want to make sure that you get ALL the dirt off your wheels. prep is the most important part of paint.

step 4: tape off your tires/any part of your wheel you don't want painted. I taped off the inside of the rim (sorry, no pic), my valve stem, and the tire itself.


step 5: sand down the wheel. now, most other sites will tell you to strip your clearcoat, or use aircrafter stripper and take the wheel all the way to the aluminum. if you have a million hours to work on your wheels, you can do this... but it's hard. our wheels have a slight bend in, and it's hard to scrape everything off. I started doing this with my first wheel, it turned out to be a terrible mistake. just give it a good sand until the clearcoat looks foggy. you're just roughing up the surface enough for the primer to adhere.

step 6: wedge the index cards between the tire and the rim. this helps make sure that no paint gets on your tire and allows you to hit the edge of the rim a little easier.

step 7: take acetone and wipe off all the dust from sanding. keep repeating this until your cloth comes off pretty clean. the acetone will evaporate itself and leave you with a dust free wheel ready for primer.

step 8: hit it with primer. I used a darker grey because i wanted the end product to be a darker rim.


allow 10 min for primer to dry, remember, lots of light coats. the first coat or two shouldn't even totally cover the rim. be patient, there are a lot of angles to hit with paint. do about 4 coats.

step 9:check for blemishes. if you want you can wet sand the primer with high grit (1000+)

if everything looks good, move on.

step 10: hit it with the wheel paint. I used duplicolor wheel paint in the darker gunmetal. this paint has a ton of metallic flake and looks awesome when the sun is shining on it clean. (being brake dust grey doesn't hurt either)


same thing, lots of light coats.

if it all looks good, you can leave it or hit it with a couple coats of clear.

step 12 (if you cleared it): put the wheels back on and snap a picture with your phone to send to all your friends!



i like it. it really sets my fit apart. and the stock rims are a good design (really heavy, but a good design). so, instead of spending $500 on new wheels/tires, i spent about $60.

EDIT: I forgot, whatever you do, do NOT use paint stripper on the center cap. it dries out the plastic and makes it crack like the one in the picture, i had to buy a new one. if you just sand it, you can paint it along with the rest of the rim. i still took mine out and painted it separate, then put it back in.

 

there isnt a thing wrong with painting your wheels. good write up

 

Great DIY write-up! +rep! Great idea wedging index cards between the wheel and tire bead.

I like what you did to the wheels, too.

 

f-ing awsome! I love the look, and intend on doing this over the winter, while my snow tires are on. thank you for sharing the how too. they look great too!

 

Looks great I was thinking about making a diy too I already did this a while ago I used exactly the same steps but used mek

 

man your car is nice.. black roof... JDM taillights.. thats the best setup ever...

iam thinking about doing this to my mom's honda accord... lol

 

How is the durability so far of the duplicolor wheel paint? It looks really awesome! I'm thinking about possibly painting my stock wheels at some point too.

 

turned out really well. nice lookin' car

 

if you spray painted it, it is matter of time before it starts to chip. and it will look cheap after thats done.

Please guys, if your going to paint your wheels, have it powder coated. Don't cheap out and spray paint.

 

Looks great, let us know how they hold up.

 

I spray painted the wheels on an old Accord I had and they do start collecting chips as you drive it, but powder coating is expensive.

 

Powdercoating is very expensive. This cost me $65 and some time. I've put about 6-8k on my car since painting... No chips yet.

 

Powder coating chips too, even when applied correctly. For the cost and effort of taking the rims apart and having them powder coated I would just spray them, when winter comes and I swap them for my snow tire and steel rim set up I would go over my painted rims and repaint as needed, its cheap easy to repair, powdercoat is not.

 

I did same DIY to my '07 Fit. Four years later, rarely any chips. It was easy to spray paint over them again. Paint handles all weather conditions well.

 

Hey man looks good. I used Dupli-Color etching primer and wheel paint, didn't clear mine either. Been done for about a month no chipping issues yet. here's a couple of pics



You can see how much darker they are now. I like that it has a little flake in it.



Here's the car half done.

 

thats the same stuff i used (different primer). i sanded and painted the center caps too... just be careful cause they're plastic. looking good though! i still get compliments on mine everyday almost.

 

looks good! duplicolor wheel paint is durable and lays well.

 

Looks great!! Awesome tutorial! I am definitely considering this!! Two questions though.. Where did you get the paint, and how many cans of duplicolor did you use for all four wheels?
Thanks!

 

Finally, a good use for that Case of Paper from the old Dot Matrix Printer.

Looks good. i'd love to go white with mine but... extremely active 4 yr old != extra time or money.

~SB

 

you should pic the other pics ofyour car on here, or the links to it, it really does it justice