Repair damaged rim finish?

moonpost

moonpost

Member
Hey all -
Got a pretty low price on 5 rims off of an old Montero, but they are a little worn, scuffed, etc. If you take a look at the pictures, is this just worn coatings or does it go deeper? What steps should I do to clean up these wheels? Thank you for your ideas and input for this new Delica owner.
 

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Corrosion of conformity, powder coated mine thinking back i should have painted them myself.
Perpetration is the majority of the work
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Oh yeah also black letters out silly me
 
moonpost said:
Hey all -
Got a pretty low price on 5 rims off of an old Montero, but they are a little worn, scuffed, etc. If you take a look at the pictures, is this just worn coatings or does it go deeper? What steps should I do to clean up these wheels? Thank you for your ideas and input for this new Delica owner.
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The factory finish looks to have corrosion under it. Pretty common. Unfortunately the only way to really fix it is to refinish the wheels. You have a few options depending whether you want to spend money, or time... off the top of my head here's a few ways I've gone about it...
1) Leave them
Pro - Cheap and Easy
Con - They look beat up...

2) Clean and Spray them with bed liner...
Pro - Cheap, easy, durable, hides everything, textured finish
Con - Hard to keep clean, anybody that knows what they are looking at.... knows what you did... you will be judged...

3) Clean the wheel and Plastidip them
Pro - Easy, Cheap, Removable, Low gloss finish
Con - Low durability, Low gloss finish

4) Clean the wheels, scuff up the surface with sand paper, and hit em with your favorite colour spray paint.
Pro - Low Cost minimal effort
Con - Mediocre finish and Durability

5) Clean wheels sand trough all the damaged area and feather edge the finish, file down any curb rash. Prime, scruff, de-grease, paint with favorite colour spray paint, allow to flash off, top coat with 2K clear.
Pro - Low/Mid cost, More durable, nice finish if enough time is spent prepping.
Con - time consuming

6) Sand finish completely off the wheels with course grit paper, work your way down to 2500 grit wet sand, then continue with aluminum polish.
Pro - Low cost, High polish finish "chrome" look finish, unique
Con - extremely labour intensive (Suggest using power tools... but it still takes forever...)

7) Take to wheel refinishing shop and have them repainted
Pro - Easy, professional looking OEM finish
Con Expensive

8) Have them sand blasted and powder coated
Pro - Fast/easy, highly durable good looking finish
Con - Expensive
 
so I took a wire brush attachment on my drill to them and stripped them down and sanded them (and that's where I should've stopped, because they looked cool and shiny!) and then I used filler primer and a metallic spray paint. it looked stupid. the Rustoleum 2x aluminum metallic seemed like a good option but it really was just a dull gray once applied. so I got some Behr Dark Steel Metallic and that looked better at least (somewhat close to the side panels color and a bit sparkly) and then used a gloss clear coat. I was hoping the clear coat would accentuate the metallic shine but it didn't do much. anyway, they look decent now. as I said, I think I should've just stripped them and then clear coated them as I wanted more metallic shine, but whatever. oh, and yeah, it was time consuming as heck. but very low cost.
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