It is a widely known and accepted belief that wheels and tires make the car, a notion that Rob Dickinson of Singer Vehicle Design sums up nicely in this really amazing video by Chris Harris (a video I have personally added several dozen ticks to the total-view-o-meter, and will probably reference throughout this blog as it comes up...). And living in Brooklyn, I have witnessed first hand the attempt of many would-be car guys bolting up outrageous rims of every description to the most unassuming of cars in an effort to "make" their car. It's not always trans-formative, but I always appreciate it when I see a Camry with a nice set of wheels - whether it works or not.
For my purposes, I wanted to keep the time-tested factory look of the car intact but modify it a bit to make it my own. Being that this car is a daily driver spending much of it's time pounding the streets of Brooklyn (which definitely pound back), I decided to use the streets as my palette. It helps that the paint already on the car is the exact shade of beat-down asphalt...
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| street palette - gotta work in the white somewhere... |
So, here we have rusty metal, UV damaged asphalt, and some cracked crosswalk paint... Beautiful! Now, on to refinishing the stock 6" and 7" Fuchs Wheels...
Scrub Brush: check.
Degreaser: check.
Whirlpool Tub: Check?!?!
I have read about other Porsche guys using chemical strippers, but I currently live in a 2-bed condo with 2 kids. Using Aircraft Stripper in that environment is akin to living next to Chernobyl in the late '80s - so I went with the elbow-grease method of hand sanding, and by "hand" I mean 5" random-orbit palm sander and a Dremel tool (it's fair to say I did a fair share of finish work by actual hand...). Still required some precautions (ie: dust mask), but I think I got through it with my current brain cell count largely intact.
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| almost stripped. fuch. |
I almost stopped the process here, as I really liked the look of the military-matte-green-ish primer on these wheels, but thought better of it and went ahead with the next steps, which for me was laying the base color: Duplicolor's Racing Bronze!!
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| base coat dry and ready for masking |
This wasn't as easy as I expected, but still pretty straightforward. If you use this, or any metallic color via rattle-can, please make sure you keep the flow of paint perpendicular to the painting surface - getting off axis causes it to "dust up" which doesn't look very good. You will have to sand and re-coat if this happens.
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| curing in the "spray booth" |
After four or five coats, I let it dry long enough (about a week) to mask off the "petals" and outer rim with 3M Vinyl Tape & low-tack painter's tape and proceeded to add matte black, also Duplicolor Wheel Paint, to the surrounding recessed areas. Masking off the petals was definitely more art than measured precision as I allowed the contours of the wheel dictate where the mask should go. I've seen others approach this area differently, but I like the overall size of the colored portion vs the black background on my set up, and it looks real consistent from section to section, and even wheel to wheel. Don't be afraid to play a little jazz here - you will know when the look is right!
The background painting process went very smoothly, and peeled off the mask after allowing 20 min of dry time before applying 3 coats of high gloss clear, followed by 2 thin, even coats of matte. This technique provides an excellent sense of depth to the clear, but still reduces shine consistent with the quasi-race-inspired-hot-rod look I'm going for.
In the end, they all came out better than expected, and 7 months in still look like the day I mounted them up. I found the Duplicolor Paints to be a real decent product that yielded the results I wanted, and thus far has proven to be very durable. All this took a little over a month (including cure time) and cost about $60 in materials...not too shabby.
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