gpetersen

hahaha take it easy guys, its just a wheel painting thread yeah i cudv/ was thinking bout getting them sodablasted, but didnt. I get them stripped and paint them standard colour if i sell the wheels or the car to make it more sale-able.

http://www.bimmersport.co.nz/forums/index....showtopic=36327

Leave the wheels for a day to dry off nicely and then unmask the wheels, when pulling the fine line tape off, pull it at 90 degress or perpendicular to the wheel to get it off as clean as possible. The finished product Now some of u mite be asking y i sprayed my standard wheels. I was goin to trade them in when i get my new wheels, but i went to a gymkhana day at hampton a few weeks back and realised that i still want to do track days with my car and that 20 inch wheels were not goin to cut it on the track. All of the work i have/goin to do to this car is a reflection of my character and personality. I am not doing the work to impress any body. Its purely because i want to and i can, it is my car after all. People all have different senses of taste, and i have mine. I dont climb down purists' throat because they leave a car plain and boring how it came from the factory, and dont expect a purist to climb down my throat becos im changing the car from how BMW made it. Its my f**king car! Cheers

Once the scan sealer has flashed off, around 10-15 mins depending on temperature, u can go ahead and put 1 coat of the black paint on. Put about 2-3 coats on waiting about 10-15 mins between coats. In my last coat i added a product called flatting base, it flattens the gloss level of the paint, i was goin for a matt black but that didnt happen hahaha i didnt put enough flatting base in the colour Also when painting wheels, u wana paint the edges first to get them covered and do the face of the wheel last cos thats wat needs to look the best and flattest

Once all the wheels r ready to be painted, the first product i used was an adhesion promoter by PPG called scan sealer. I used this because as i mentioned earlier i couldnt get in to some places with my scotchy or sand paper, so one coat of this over all the wheels will sort out the new paint sticking to and unsanded surface, as long as it is clean and free of dirt, sudt and grease.

This is wat the wheels shud look like when fully masked up and ready to go with the black paint.

After u have prepped all the wheels and now ready to paint the centre, give the wheels a good blow down and a degrease, blow it down again to get any degreaser out of areas u cudnt get in with a rag. Use 3M 6mm fine line tape to mask out on the body colour where u want the black to meet. Using the 6mm fine line tape allows u to make the circle around the outside of the wheel nice and clean without any kinks in the tape causing bleed thru. After that tape up the rest of the body colour using 18mm tape as show in the following pics. A tip for masking up the valves; Pull a small piece of tape, roughly 50mm and tear it off the roll. Wrap the tape snuggly around the tip of ur pinky finger to make a tube, then slide that over the valve. Doin it this way allows u to get the tape down as far as possible to where the valve meets the painted surface.

Now that the red is done and dusted its time to prepare urself for some frustrating sanding and really sore fingers. Depending on how intricate ur wheels are the prep time will vary. These bastard wheels took me about 30-40 mins per wheel to prep Start off by removing the centre caps, usually the back of a screwdriver works fine. Remove any other badges or stickers on the wheel (and throw them away, it cant be reused). I had ///M badges that had been masked up really sh*t in a previous paint job and the recess where they sit was all mangey and just horrible, so i cleaned all the old paint out with a wire wheel, then feathered the edges out. When i prep wheels, i always start at the valve so that i know where i am in terms of progress on each wheel. I also to the hardest parts first so i dont lose interest and skimp on the prep work! So in this case i did the edges of the spokes first and the face last. Using the red scotchy go thru and scuff up as best u can, when all the edges r done scotchy the face. There will be parts u just cannot get into, but dont worry there is an adhesion promoter u will be using

Once all prepped and masked up its time to degrease one more time, then hit it wit the colour Once the colour has flashed off, u can go ahead and clearcoat it. Just 1 - 2 coats is fine. These pics of the red sprayed, dried and unmasked ready to start prepping for the black.

After this, make wat is called a soft edge. U do this by folding about 1/3 of the 18mm tape back onto itself, rolling it along ur leg as u pull it off the roll. Put the soft edge on the edge that is going to painted body colour, in this case imola rot. Once that is done go over it again with the 48mm masking tape so u have something to stick the plastic to when u covet the centre of the wheel. Mask up the tire with 48mm tape too, just till the masking goes on to the tread. Its not necessary to mask up the entire tire.

the first step of the prep is to yet again give it a good wipe down with the solvent wax and grease remover. It doesn't necessarily mean it will only take one wipe, keep going until the tire looks really dull and like a chalk board. Its important to do this because if u dont then the masking tape will not stick to the tires when u mask them up. After thats done, use the red scotchy to scuff up the lip. You want to 'scotchy' past the point of where u r goin to mask up. Do this because then u know that the paint u r about to spray is sitting a on fully and well prepped surface.

Now, the products i used in this project is as follows; - PPG base coat colour (imola rot) - Autothane clear coat - Autothane commercial vehicle black - Autothane flatting base - 2 Way thinner - Wax and grease remover - 48mm masking tape - 18mm masking tape - 6mm fine line tape - 6 inch masking paper - Red scotch brite pad - PPG Scan sealer, adhesion promoter

After that u want to go and have ur wheels de- beaded. All this is, is having the seal broken where the tire meets the rim, u will need to take the wheels to a wheel/tire shop to have that done. I went to a local Frank Allen and they did it for free. The reason u do this so that u can sand the lip all the way round to past where the tire meets the rim. This means if u can sand it properly ur paint will stick as long as it needs to until curbed And it just looks a lot better.

Ok here we go. First, of course remove the wheels from the car. Then degrease them thoroughly with a degreasing agent, they usually have them in stacks of about a million in super cheap. Once soaked nicely, water blast them if u have ur own, great, if not then just go to wash world or something. But using a waterblaster is a hell of a lot faster and easier than using the old elbow grease The reason for degreasing the wheels, is simply because most of us use that wonderful silicone spray to keep the tires nice and shiny, except silicone is the absolute devil when it comes to spray painting. The tiniest amount can ruin hours and hours of meticulous prep. So do ur self the favour and degrease ur wheels before u start

oh my bad, sorry guys i forgot to consult u wen considering painting the wheels on my car...ill keep u in mind for future projects. im thinking of posting some more projects of custom audio install, changing the head unit to an alpine getting rid of the shitty speakers, also a sub, maybe 2. Stealth installing the amps aswell. Then also stealth installing a valentine one with a heads up display. After that i was thinking of showing how to do a full cut, polish and detail the way the professionals do it, for the cheapest layout still using professional grade products. Let me know wat u think and maybe u guys can come up with a few weekend projects the other readers on here can look at and do to their cars too. Quality and informative info is wat this forum is supposed to be bout at the end of it all or start a consultancy thread along with any other like minded peeps on here

here is a pic of what the next weekend project will be

hahahaha yea i probly shudv just taken them out i know, but oh well its done now yeah the camera doesnt do much justice for them cos went he flash goes it lights up the 3 reflector strips i masked out, but looks pretty dope just in the day light -byza, come cuz its dope thanks for the comments guys, look out for some more weekend projects....next up on here is wheels, black out side grills and front kidney grills, then hopefully some audio peace

Heyo iv added a small thread in the appearances section of the forums... check it out if u keen to tint ur own til lights http://www.bimmersport.co.nz/forums/index....showtopic=36288

the finished product rear and front... if u have any questions about how to do this dont hesitate to ask me im glad to help where i can hope u enjoyed this thread, and i will post some more pics and thread of small DIY weekend projects. peace grant

wen u r satisfied with how much tint u hav on ur lights u can go ahead and clear them. i used a 2 pak clearcoat for this just becos wen it cures its pretty hard to damage the clearcoat... 1 1/2 - 2 coats will b ample on these not too heavy or it will run

this is the tail lights, with about 4 coats of paint on it, and just how i want them to look... i masked out the reflector lens on the tail lights, besides being legal it looks waay better with some red left in the light in stead of the whole thing just plain black...

wen u do the first coat it wont look like much, but wen u start to get to the 2nd and 3rd coats u will start to see the tinting happening... U can see on here i masked out 3 lines on the lense, i did this as purely cosmetic, there 3 lines in the lense itself so didnt just freestyle it

next product is the colour itself, i had this colour made up at an automotive paint shop. It is just a clear binder mixed wit 5% black in it, i think its important to have the colour this way instead of just plain black cos u can keep putting light coats on until u get the desired level of tint u want on ur lenses. u can see on the lid, how weak the black is.

now for the fun part spraying the lenses.... the first product used is really important as it allows the paint to stick to the plastic properly plastic adhesion promoter, dont worry and skip this step if using tamiya 'smoke' aerosol can. The RC paint is designed to bond to plastic. Put one light coat over all the lenses goin to b painted...

Close the bootlid carefully making sure all plastic or newspaper is tucked inside the jamb and not in the way of where u will need to b spraying... Once that is done, mask off the rest of the car...in this case again i used plastic, but feel free to use newspaper up to the top of the rear windscreen then just a sheer or something over the rest of the car