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Painting Rostyle Wheels?

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RossL

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Are there any suggestions on the best way to do this? Are there any paints available locally that resemble the correct color?
 
First, it may be good to ensure that your rostyles are structurally sound. A wheel balancing shop will take a look, maybe free of charge, and tell you. At the least, a very close inspection for cracks, anomalies, etc., before you proceed. You don't want a bad wheel to ruin your day.

Perhaps the "best" way is to have the wheels media blasted down to bare metal then primed, painted and clear coated. Moss sells the correct color and I'm sure someone else here will chime in with aftermarket colors that are correct.

A paint mask for the wheels is available, I think Victoria Brit sells them. I've heard varying stories regarding the efffectiveness of these masks.

I hand-sanded the outside of the wheels (didn't do the reverse side), washed thouroughly and cleaned with alcohol, then primed 2 coats with a generic silver metal primer, oversprayed that with 2 coats of rattle can silver, then hand-painted the black parts using a semi-gloss black. They look pretty good but the paint won't last nearly as long as a proper (see above) paint job.

Then, take them to the wheel balancing shop for a good balance job (optional).

It's somewhat of a artsy job getting the black parts right. Took me the best part of 2 days to do mine, but I'm glad I did it.

Anyone else??
 
Rustoleum silver, Not the spray but the stuff in the little half pint or pint can seems to have a lot of solids.

Others have used different colors which look good, charcoal for instance.
 
Before even starting, sandblast the entire wheel including inside rim. Spray with 2 part primer. Then and only then use correct colors to paint. Taping and spraying will give you the best finish. Should last your lifetime.
 
I know this may not be of help, but for my steel-wheel sprite, I started out as Jack has said. I have a small media blast cabinet and the 13 inch wheels actually fit inside it. After cleaning all the oily, greasy bits off of them (outside the cabinet, of course) I put them in the cabinet and did a thorough media blasting of each wheel. This let me see EXACTLY what the state of each wheel was.
The only thing I really needed was that some of the wheels needed straightening, as apparently they have seen some chug holes (as we call them here in Texas).

I wasn't able to find a shop locally that trued wheels anymore (why is it that this is a plug and play society and we end up losing these skills), but I did find someone to help me get them 'closer' to true.

After this, I did a nice silver powder coat on the wheels using my handy dandy Harbor Freight powder coating system and a used electric oven. If the wheels were any larger than 13 inches, they might not have fit.

In the end, they are really nice and the powder coating is holding up great!

I think the key is all in the prep work.

Larry
 
I had mine bead blasted & then powder coated in silver, just left them plain appart from the bling.
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Which of the Rostyle styles do you have? The later ones or the ones like in my picture? Sand blast the wheels, paint them black by spray, then paint any silver with an artist brush of some kind, then a couple coats of clear. If you try to mask or tape off and spray the silver, its just going to be a mess and even if it works you will spend more time taping than painting by hand. They even make paint touch up pins in silver so if you can color within the lines in a coloring book you can paint the silver.
 
Yup, blast or have them blasted. Then a good two-part epoxy primer.

I've done 'em both with masking tape and those masks... I'd choose tape to do it again.

Did a set for brother's MGB-GT and substituted the car's body color for the black. Looked very nice, IMO.
 
I have never painted one of the later rosytles. Seems like they have longer areas to be painted and tape might work better. I might be doing a set in the near future. Either that or the wire wheels, I have not decided on that yet.
 
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