I have a mint set of red rota gt3's with a polished lip. I do not like the color, nor polished lips in general. there arent any imperfections that I can see. Can I just paint the rim without doing any prep work?

Or how would I go about painting these? I will be painting them all black, even the lip.

 

you must do some prep work to the rims. A polished surface wont allow paint to adhear,my best advice would be use nothing heavier than 300 grit sand paper. you have to scuff the whole rim first, make sure you dont miss any spots.(if u still see some shiny spots hit them again) wash them really well after,id use some laquer thinner first and then mild soap and warm water.let them air dryand make sure they are completely dirt free. then prime them, i'd use Duplicolor primer, its an automotive primer in a spry can or you can go to your local auto paint store and buy a quart of primer and the reducer and spray them out. Let the primer flash (or dry, to the time recomended on the can) then apply your paint, Make sure the paint you use is also automotive. a cheap oil base paint u might but at Home depot wont adhear to automotive(Laquer base) paint/primer.Put a few good coats on also allowing recomended flash tiime before adding another coat, then ull be ready for your clear finish. The same thing ull need a few coats allowing them to flash between coats. If i were you id leave the lip polished, only because more than likely the paint will chip when you have to put tires on them due too the tire machine. the metal rod used to stretch the tire rubs on the lip of the rim and may cause the paint to chip. The best way to color your rims( iN my opoinion) would be to have them powder coated. Hope this helps you.

 

It all depends on if you are trying to do it the right way or half *** it to just get it to look good.
If you wanna half *** it scuff the rim up with red scotch brite and paint it.


If you want to do it the right way to where the paint will not peel/flake or chip badly
you need to scuff the wheel really good with red scotch brite pad and then spray some epoxy primer that can be sprayed as a sealer also.PPG has a epoxy primer DP90LF that is black and it can be sprayed as a epoxy primer sealer with self etching properties,witch means it will bit into the old paint and the aluminum.So it will not peel off later down the road.Spray that on let it flash and wait the amount of time the tech sheet tells you to(i believe its like 10 min) then spray your base coat and clear or single stage/or what ever paint you got and it will stick and not come loose.However i believe you cannot spray lacquer paint over this primer because it will not stick.I don't recommend using lacquer paints because they are re-soluble,witch means if you by accident get lacquer thinner on the paint it will come back to life as if you just sprayed it on there and the paint will run off the surface.plus lacquer paints shrink badly.

 

Thanks for the replies.

Funny thing happened. I went to autozone to get some paint and things to prep the rims, I bought the supplies hopped in the vehicle, and someone called to trade their bronze circuit 8s for my red gt3s. I jumped on that right away since I miss my old c8s.

If the person didnt call, I would have ruined a new set of rims haha

 

A mint set of rims is easy to paint with a rattlecan. Just sand them with grid 800, add primer, paint and a clearcoat. Let it cure for about a week and polish them te get rid of the orangepeel. I would suggest to use 2K clear to give the paint some strenght.

 

Good call. I just picked up a set of gt3's that some punk kid decided to paint.


It took me 10 hours to get rid of this garbage.

GL man

 

10hrs? aircraft stripper would have all 4 of those wheels bare aluminum in 1hr.

 

Ya...tried that ish' started eating through the clear coat. Then switched to pain thinner then lacquer remover. doesn' help that I'm ocd bout that ish'

 

I'm looking for a set of red/polished lip GT3s if anyone is selling plese text (716)771-7447

 

Anxious to see how these come out. I got GT3s on my hatch

 

Not gonna turn out..they're gone...