LegacyGT
New member
- Aug 13, 2010
- 2,090
- 0
For some reason the gods of snow are withholding white wintery bliss that Subaru owners dream about, and instead has brought us temperatures in the 50's just a few days before the new year. Rather than get upset at the weather I took advantage of it to get in some work that normally would be put on hold until spring. :idea:
Since the temperatures have gotten below freezing, I have had to retire my extreme performance summer tires and throw on the Blizzak snow tires. Unfortunately there has been no snow to play in yet :awman:
The rims I have my Blizzaks mounted on are the OEM tires that have been demoted to winter tires, so I dont feel bad if I get a bit of curb rash should I push a scoobie drift a bit too far
The rims have some cosmetic damage, but more importantly after having my black rims on all summer I really like the black on black look much better than the silver on black, so it was time to cue the music and get to work (A-team theme) :coolgleam:
First order of business was to remove the wheels and clean them up. There was a lot of old wheel weight adhesive to tackle and as you may have already seen the wheels were very contaminated with iron. Clean up was done with goo-gone and a plastic razor blade to remove adhesive, then Iron-X to decontaminate, followed up by a claying and one last pass with goo-gone to prep the surface for painting.
The pictures of the car before:
Old wheel weight goop:
Now to let Iron-X Do it's thing:
After a long and drawn out (and bloody) battle, things were looking much better:
Clean wheel compared to dirty one:
Now for the painting :hungry:
I chose Plasti-Dip spray for this job after using it on my front grill and getting some really great results. I found it in the hardware store with the spray paint and promptly bough out the stores stock :evil:
Ready for prime time!
The actual painting process I didn't get a lot of pictures of because I didn't want my camera around to get overspray on it. First thing I did was put on my chemical respirator and I was very glad that I did. Plasti-Dip is really cool stuff, however, it has some really nasty chemicals in it. I didn't notice at the time, when when I was finished and took off the respirator to walk back inside the chemicals about knocked me out. I ended up having to leave my jacket I had been wearing in the garage overnight to air out and not stink up the house.
The painting process went well, but it took a lot of coats to cover up the OEM silver and get the look I was wanting. I found a good application method that worked well for me by applying a heavy first coat (wet) and then letting it dry before layering light coats about 10 minutes apart. I found when painting my grill that you can control the texture a bit by how far away you spray from; since I was wanting a fairly smooth finish I was spraying from about 10'' away. I painted the back side first, then sprayed the fronts.
In all I used up just about 4 cans of Plasti-Dip. I am very happy with the results, and I think for an afternoon's worth of effort it came our really well. The wheels won't hold up to a microscope, but I doubt that anyone would realize this was a rattle can job unless they were really scrutinizing the wheels for some reason.
A few shots of the wheels while curing (they are propped up with the spray paint caps so the bottoms don't touch the plastic I have under them).
I used the halogens to help gently speed up the drying process:
You can see (below) that I have taped off the back portion that comes into contact with the discs so that it will still have good metal on metal contact where it mounts.
Finished Shots (before & after)
Before:
After:
Before:
After:
Close up:
You can see the light texture
In the daylight I am really happy with how they look, and I think it is a huge improvement from where I started. I will report back on the durability of the Plasti-Dip spray, however, this stuff is really fantastic. I think I will use it in the near future to do some underbody coating and wheel well dressing. It is very versatile stuff.
Lessons learned - I have a few thin spots that look a bit pewter in direct sun that were in difficult to spray areas, but that is splitting hairs. It also takes a lot of Plasti-Dip to get a good thick coat on. Each wheel has 6-7 coats on it, and I used almost 1 can per wheel.
Now its time to go drive around and show off my new look :gidiup:
Im the MAN
Since the temperatures have gotten below freezing, I have had to retire my extreme performance summer tires and throw on the Blizzak snow tires. Unfortunately there has been no snow to play in yet :awman:
The rims I have my Blizzaks mounted on are the OEM tires that have been demoted to winter tires, so I dont feel bad if I get a bit of curb rash should I push a scoobie drift a bit too far
The rims have some cosmetic damage, but more importantly after having my black rims on all summer I really like the black on black look much better than the silver on black, so it was time to cue the music and get to work (A-team theme) :coolgleam:First order of business was to remove the wheels and clean them up. There was a lot of old wheel weight adhesive to tackle and as you may have already seen the wheels were very contaminated with iron. Clean up was done with goo-gone and a plastic razor blade to remove adhesive, then Iron-X to decontaminate, followed up by a claying and one last pass with goo-gone to prep the surface for painting.
The pictures of the car before:
Old wheel weight goop:
Now to let Iron-X Do it's thing:
After a long and drawn out (and bloody) battle, things were looking much better:
Clean wheel compared to dirty one:
Now for the painting :hungry:
I chose Plasti-Dip spray for this job after using it on my front grill and getting some really great results. I found it in the hardware store with the spray paint and promptly bough out the stores stock :evil:
Ready for prime time!
The actual painting process I didn't get a lot of pictures of because I didn't want my camera around to get overspray on it. First thing I did was put on my chemical respirator and I was very glad that I did. Plasti-Dip is really cool stuff, however, it has some really nasty chemicals in it. I didn't notice at the time, when when I was finished and took off the respirator to walk back inside the chemicals about knocked me out. I ended up having to leave my jacket I had been wearing in the garage overnight to air out and not stink up the house.
The painting process went well, but it took a lot of coats to cover up the OEM silver and get the look I was wanting. I found a good application method that worked well for me by applying a heavy first coat (wet) and then letting it dry before layering light coats about 10 minutes apart. I found when painting my grill that you can control the texture a bit by how far away you spray from; since I was wanting a fairly smooth finish I was spraying from about 10'' away. I painted the back side first, then sprayed the fronts.
In all I used up just about 4 cans of Plasti-Dip. I am very happy with the results, and I think for an afternoon's worth of effort it came our really well. The wheels won't hold up to a microscope, but I doubt that anyone would realize this was a rattle can job unless they were really scrutinizing the wheels for some reason.
A few shots of the wheels while curing (they are propped up with the spray paint caps so the bottoms don't touch the plastic I have under them).
I used the halogens to help gently speed up the drying process:
You can see (below) that I have taped off the back portion that comes into contact with the discs so that it will still have good metal on metal contact where it mounts.
Finished Shots (before & after)
Before:
After:
Before:
After:
Close up:
You can see the light texture
In the daylight I am really happy with how they look, and I think it is a huge improvement from where I started. I will report back on the durability of the Plasti-Dip spray, however, this stuff is really fantastic. I think I will use it in the near future to do some underbody coating and wheel well dressing. It is very versatile stuff.
Lessons learned - I have a few thin spots that look a bit pewter in direct sun that were in difficult to spray areas, but that is splitting hairs. It also takes a lot of Plasti-Dip to get a good thick coat on. Each wheel has 6-7 coats on it, and I used almost 1 can per wheel.
Now its time to go drive around and show off my new look :gidiup:
Im the MAN
Looks great and curious to see the long term durability. I like the idea of using it on the underbody!! I think a full CDC bodysuit may be in order when trapped under the car with it! I may have to find some places I could use this stuff!
rops:
