I've won a set of 5 14" original steel wheels that need refurbing and I'm wondering which way to go. They all need blasting to start with to remove several laters of paint and muck and then re finishing. I would like them in 2 colours, the outer rim in white and the centres including the bit with holes in in green to match the bus. The options i have is ; 1) powder coat in white and then paint the green on after keying the powder coated area. I guess i could do the green parts at home. 2) painting at a spray shop with 2 pack with the rims masked off. Would have to be done professionally at some cost? 3) paint at home using something like etch primer and then factory paint colours made up in aerosol. Any /all advice will be gratefully recieved ....what have any members done? Best Regards from the Meltman.......up North!
Powder coat is definitely worth doing. I got ours done in white then keyed the outside of them and painted them in L90D to match the van's upper half. Think I paid £200 for 5 wheels and the brake backing plates to be blasted and coated.
Powder coat white, then do the rest yourself. Masking up wheels to two tone them is quite time consuming to do a nice job, so a paint shop would probably charge more than you really want to pay.
Powder coating is expensive and presumably the tyres would need to be removed first at a cost and tyres put back on the powder coated wheels at a cost. Also the wheels may have rust pitting which I presume would cause problems with powder coating. I refurbed mine by hand and painted with Rustoleum and spent the money on new tyres, but that's me.
If you go the powder coating route, make sure you either mask off the taper where the wheel nut seats or remove the powder coat from the taper afterwards. If you don’t, there’s a possibility of the powder coat cracking and wheel nuts loosening off.
Many thanks for the replies guys, all much appreciated. The wheels have no tyres and I've stripped off all balance weights and valves. It will be after Christmas now but I'm probably going the shotblast/ prime/Rustoleum route. Outer rims etc in L90D and then I'll mask off and paint the centres to match the bus colour, get some made up to code in aerosols if possible. Avenue coatings look as though they do it. Thanks again, Meltman.
