Painting my own alloys

[williredale]

littlemel said:

I am so glad that i have just read this - i purchased an MG BGT (Anniversary Edition) this weekend as my first restoration job and was going to do the wheels myself.......was it really that bad, or would a sand blaster thing be easier, and then re paint?

What sort of condition are the wheels in at the moment? Mine were pretty bad! I had nine rostyle wheels and because I wanted the car to look its best while I refurbished the wheels I took the tyres off the worst four wheels and left the best ones on the car.

What sort of wheels have you got on the car? I can't remember if the anniversary has different wheels or if it has rostyles like mine. I didn't have access to a sander like benjj so all the work was done by hand with a wire brush, wire wool and various grades of sandpaper. I can't remember exactly how long it took to prep the first wheel but it was probably four or five hours of hand sanding. I then sprayed several coats of silver which looked ok but it went badly wrong when I masked it and sprayed the black. There were runs and the tape lifted the silver in a couple of spots. At that point I gave up and took the four wheels to a local place for blasting and powder coating. I paid £40 per wheel which I think was a better investment than my time and materials. It also gave a much better finish.

I think the key would be the condition of the wheels at the moment and whether you want to keep the tyres or replace with new ones. If the wheels are ok and you want to keep the tyres I'd do it yourself. benjj has demonstrated that you can get good results at home. I needed new tyres and my skills and patience were not up to the job!

Anyway, that's enough of my ramblings for the moment. Put some pictures of the car up and welcome to Pistonheads!