Need advice on black wheels

brendanshoaf

New Member
Joined
Jan 21, 2021
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4
Location
North Carolina
I’m a young highschool student so my budget is a little tight. I have silver wheels right now and want to black them out. Would it be better to paint them or buy used ones?
 
Yeah, look into plasti-dip. My buddy did his rims on his old Bronco, that stuff held up for a couple of years.
 
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And another vote for plastidip. I just finished stripping it off a set of wheels and was glad to have the still-pristine factory finish underneath. That doesn't happen with paint.

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In almost every parking lot these days you see a vehicle or two with black spraypainted or maybe plastidipped wheels and they are all chipped up with shiny specs showing through.

If I was tight on money I would rather leave my wheels the way they are. You mentioned buying used ones - that would be better than painting and you could sell your current wheels. As soon as you you paint them, their value severely decreases because nobody wants to spend much money on used wheels that the previous owner spray painted.
 
Do you have anywhere near you a place that does powder coating? I am going to get mine done soon all 5 wheels for 250 and a ton of colors to choose from.
 
2nd the Procomp wheels. Good price good wheels.
I met a guy the other day at my mechanics who paints rims for a living. He uses an epoxy primer and a 2k urethane. You can spray both with a cheap touch up gun and small air compressor. You can also spray with a Preval and thin around 25%. Auto paint cost an arm and a leg. I am going to let you all in on a secret for cheaper 2k urethane in solid colors and epoxy polymide primer. Hawk Laboratories I have refinished bathtubs for over 26yrs using there system. You can buy quarts premixed color. I have also painted panels on my f250 yrs ago with it.
Or just plastidip and save up for wheels.
 
How durable is it?
It works great if you never go offroad or use a car wash with high pressure hose. It starts to peel immediately. It's really cheap though. $40 for black wheels is an insane amount of money, not to have to touch up your Plasti-Dip every time a stone or bug hits one.

I offroad and use the manual car wash all the time. A couple of mine need redone after 3 years. They all have some rock rash, but paint wouldn't have held up any better in that area and it hasn't started peeling from those spots.

At the car wash, I just don't let the nozzle get any closer than about 6" from the surface and it's done fine. Early on I opened up a spot or two by getting too close trying to move particularly stubborn clumps of dried mud, but since then I've been more careful and haven't had any more of those.

Machined and painted aluminum seem to hold it pretty well. My biggest problem area has been the center caps which are chrome-look plastic. I've never had luck getting anything to stick to chrome long term, but plastidip seems to do better than paint.

In almost every parking lot these days you see a vehicle or two with black spraypainted or maybe plastidipped wheels and they are all chipped up with shiny specs showing through.

If I was tight on money I would rather leave my wheels the way they are. You mentioned buying used ones - that would be better than painting and you could sell your current wheels. As soon as you you paint them, their value severely decreases because nobody wants to spend much money on used wheels that the previous owner spray painted.

Plastidip doesn't flake, it peels off in something that resembles pieces of a heavy duty black trash bag. It may appear to be flaking if it wasn't laid on thick enough, but that's a problem of user error, not longevity. If you follow the instructions on prep and number of coats it'll stay on unless you do something significant to compromise it. It's also important to get it good and thick because that's what's going to make it easy to peel off when you decide to change things up.
 
Man that's really attractive paint /wheel protection if you think about it.

Nice .

it really is. It's not going to prevent physical curb or rock damage but it's perfect to protect the wheels from brake dust and general road grime, salt corrosion, etc.

To strip them I just took them to the carwash, put it on High Pressure Rinse and held the nozzle about 1/2" from the surface near the rim/bead until it opened up. From there you can back off and the pressure will get under and peel it off. The car wash got it 80% there, then I went home and peeled most of the rest of it by hand in about 5 minutes. The last bits were in the lug nut wells and were sprayed too thin to peel very well but after spraying it with WD40 and waiting about 5 minutes it wiped right out with a shop towel.

The photo I posted were wheels that were on my LJ when I bought it and I'm selling them. I also did the wheels on my TJ in 2017, which are now on my LJ and a couple are about ready to be redone, but since I'm going to 35's later this year and they don't have the right backspacing, I'm just gonna strip them instead of redoing the plastidip.