Poor man's gunmetal center wheels by powdercoating
 

Hey guys........

A week or so ago I was asking about two tone powdercoating on stock rims. Tryin to achieve the SSR Comp look or the Buddy Club type II without spending the $1500 and having my wife change the locks.....

I just got back my rims today and they look friggin great; can't wait to get the tires back on em and then back on the car.

Had the guy tape/mask the outer lip, then powdercoat the center with a gunmetal gray color. Actually, it's called silver vein; sort of gunmetal with a small black vein running through it. It looks awesome. He then hit the entire wheel just out of the oven with clear powdercoat, to give it a high gloss.

Will post pics soon. Yeah, I wish they were 17's, but for $75 a wheel they look great!

David

Cheers---

sweet, I really want to see how they turned out......I've been thinking about getting my rims powder coated too. Seeing as my car is VR I was thinking about getting them colored similar to those on a Z06, or maybe a little darker. Does anyone have any pics similar to what I am describing?

post pics as soon as you can

Im interested in seeing them as well.

ditto ^

i want to see the pics! i have seen fd wheels done like that on a s13 240sx before and it looked tite.

I'd love to see how that came out also! I wanted to go that route too because rims just are too damn much like you said earlier. I have a montego blue FD too so that'll be interesting on how they look on your car. Post them when you get a chance. Awesome idea.

That's sounds great. I've been wanting to polish the outer lips of my rims... Powder coating the center spokes would look awesome, too. I have 17" Kosei/Seneca S5R's. Check my avatar.

i can't wait for pics... my brother wants to do that to his rims on his 99 GTI, he wanted black with a bolished lip, but ended up getting silver instead... do you know what the guy used to mask off the outter edge of the rim? thanks

lets see some pics!!

sounds like they turned out nice

what color is your FD?

it really depends on what color if gunmetal looks good or not

i think it looks great on VR though

I too was thinking of this, but didn't know if it was possible. Now I do and wanna see them on your car :),

PICS

Hey everyone......

Glad so many people are interested in the idea because I think they're gonna look great........I finally feel like I made my first contribution to the forum after getting so many great ideas/great advice off of it.......my car is Montego Blue and I think the dark grey centers will really set it off nicely........right now the car is on jackstands and the rims are mounted to check em out........looks kinda funky with the tires missing and the rims hanging lower than normal but I kind of get the idea of what they'll look like and I can't wait til tomorrow......

Will be getting the tires back on/rims back on tomorrow AM (Friday) and will hope to borrow a digital cam tomorrow to post some pics by tomorrow afternoon..........

Btw there is a special tape that supposedly will work such that when they bake the rim you can leave the tape on........they didn't have any so what the guy basically did was used regular masking tape, powdercoated them, then VERY CAREFULLY removed the tape without disturbing the powder, then baked them, then when they come out hot (400 degrees) he sprays them with "clear" which puts a high gloss finish on them...........

Stay tuned......and looking forward to the feedback on the pics.........

David Cheers :beer: :beerchug: :beer:

Finally the PIX - Feedback Welcome
 

Here are the pix -

I'm pissed the closeups didn't come out......camera wouldn't focus in that close........wanted to show the black "vein" that runs throughout the powdercoat.....think of it as a small, fine, black spiderweb is the best way I can describe it........if anyone wants to do this ask your powdercoat person for silver vein from Dupont.......

Will have access to a dig cam tomorrow and can try again if anyone's interested in some closer up shots......

I dunno what I'll do about the center caps.....obviously they're cheapo plastic so couldn't powdercoat them due to the 400 degree process.........seems to look OK without them anyway.......

Post feedback at will and will be glad to give some helpful hints on how it could be done even better/cleaner.......

dp :beer: :beer: :beer: Cheers!

Another....

Another

Next to last one

Last friggin one........

Photo's are SMALL!!!
 

How do you guys post such large photos...... I just viewed these off the thread and they're small as hell.....

I had to reduce the image size so I didn't exceed the 102KB file size........

You guys must know a trick........cause I see big ass photos on here all the time.........

I can email the files to anyone who wants to see the big photos cause these are too damn small......lemme know.....

dp

mrzumzum. . . i officially hate you now. :D i was planning on doing this, except i was gonna powdercoat the whole thing. that looks very good, dude!! ill probably still powdercoat the whole rim just to see what that looks like in comparison to yours. i wonder though. . . can the stock rim be machined to make the outer rim look like its the second piece to a 2 piece rim? hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. the darker center would definately mask it to make it look more like its 2 piece.

i did notice, however; in one of the pics it made the rim look smaller than stock.

paul

Looks good, too bad the closeup didn't come out. Does your camera have a macro lens or a macro function?

The larger photos you see on here most of the time are just links, they are loaded from another site using coding in the message. Another trick if you have photoshop is to save the images out for web use, that way you can reduce the quality and number of colors included in the image and reduce the filesize.

Matt

I'm pissed, but hopeful
 

I'm so pissed that these photos are so small because you really can't see what the wheels look like except for the last one..........

Matt, thanks for the tips........ I'm gonna screw with this til I get it right..........

Stay tuned......

dp

I GOT IT - THANKS MATT!!!!
 

Sorry guys.........probably wearing you out with this crap.........

Here are some BIG photos...........cutting down the "quality" knocked the shit out of the file size and the photos pretty much look the same..........ONLY FREAKIN LARGER!!!!!!!!! NOW YOU CAN SEE WHAT THE RIMS LOOK LIKE.......:drool: :drool: :drool:

That looks really nice! If you want, email the original photos to diablone@hlrally.net (preferably in a .zip) and I can get them on here larger.

Numero dos......