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General Tech Painting my Rostyle wheels

drooartz

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After I got home from my morning drive it was time to paint my Rostyle wheels. Three of them were not too bad, a little rough but your basic Rostyle. The fourth was lousy yellow paint and surface rust. Not good at all.

I chose a basic silver color (Ford Argent silver if I remember correctly, it was what the local parts store had in a silver wheel paint, I wasn't too picky). I'm not a fan of the standard Rostyle paint scheme -- a bit to 70s for me. So I decided to just to a plain silver and be done with it.

Here's what I started with. One yellow and 3 silver/black wheels. Scratches, pitting, and a bit of surface rust. Otherwise they're solid wheels.

paintrostyles1.jpg


paintrostyles2.jpg


The common wisdom is that the most important part of a paint job is the prep. I'll add in that knowing what you're trying to achieve is just as important. I was only looking for a good 10' paint job, so perfection wasn't necessary or even possible with these wheels. Good enough is good enough here, and I proceeded accordingly.

I started with a wire wheel on the yellow wheel to clean it up and get some of the yellow paint off. Then I switched to sand paper to clean it up some more and rough up the surface for paint adhesion. Next was a quick wipe down with acetone to clean off any grease. While in this stage I pulled out an old toothbrush to try and scrub some of the grease, and discovered that the toothbrush/acetone combo cleaned off all the yellow paint too, leaving the original paint underneath pretty much untouched. So scrub I did, and got the majority of the yellow off. One more pass with the sand paper and all was ready for paint.

paintrostyles3.jpg


Spent a bit of extra time making sure everything was masked up carefully to keep the paint off of the tires. In a perfect world I'd have removed the tires and wheel weights before painting, but time and resources are what they are and I just had to mask off carefully. I'll have to repaint if I ever need to rebalance the wheels, but that's simple enough if it comes to that.

Paint went on in three coats, keeping things reasonably light each coat to avoid too many runs. In the end the paint went on reasonably well, certainly good enough for my needs.

paintrostyles4.jpg


paintrostyles5.jpg


And the end result, a silver Rostyle wheel. The wheel in the picture is the formerly yellow/rust wheel. Cleaned up nicely in the end. They'll certainly do well enough for a driver car, and only cost a 6-pack of beer and a few dollars for the paint. I need to find one more wheel for a spare, and I'll be ready to go. All in all, I'm happy with the results and ready to get some miles driven! :driving:

I'll give them a few days to cure up, and on the car they go. Already ordered new center caps from Moss which should be here on Wednesday -- I'll have some completed pictures after that.

paintrostyles6.jpg
 

PAUL161

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Nice job Drew! They came up looking real nice. Now the car will looked dressed up! :encouragement: PJ
 

DrEntropy

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Brother had a GT with Rostyles, We did a silver with the burgundy car color as the accent. Taping the things (all five) was the biggest PITA. Had chrome rings added, too. Looked good on the car tho.
 
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drooartz

drooartz

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They are officially good enough. They cleaned up well, and with new center caps won't take away from the look of the car, which is adequate for the job at hand. I'd love to find a set of original steel GT wheels (or get a set of the modern Dunlop-replica wheels) but there isn't budget for this car. So silver Rostyles it is.

The thought of masking all of those wheels didn't appeal to me either, Doc. Plain and simple wins the day here.

If the GT was still in the original British Racing Green I might have considered doing the accents in the same color, but the red would be a bit much for me.
 
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drooartz

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Wheels are done and on the car. I'm satisfied with how they came out, and it's nice to just be able to take the car out for a drive.

New center caps and lug nuts clean things up nicely. Still need to find one more for a spare -- one will turn up eventually. Took the car on another drive yesterday with my local club, was nice to be driving again.

wheelsdone.jpg
 

DrEntropy

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It really looks GOOD, Drew.
 
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