Painting or Re-Painting Alloys

[MooZ]

Don't know whether I am being a complete noob here, but can you paint or re-paint alloys? I have some BBS style alloys on my mk2 right now, in just a plain silver colour, wondering if they can be re-painted to another colour - if so, what is the best procedure to getting a nice finish - and are there any special sorts of paint to use?

[dan23]

yes you can repaint them mate, and no there is no special paint just normal spray can paint will do.

1st you need to either take the tyres off or cover the tyres, then rub down the wheels with wet and dry, then spray a undercoat colour, then once dried rub down again with finner wet and dry bit of paper, then maybe a 2nd unde coat, then repeat the rub down process, then put your final coat on, agai nrepeat the rub down process, then put another coat on and so on till al lthe primer is covered, then if you want a gloss finish you need to put laqour on them, and again rub down with even finer wet and dry, the laqour will make or break the finish so take your time with it, each wheel will prob need at least 2 coats of laqour.

or most spray shops will do it for you at around £50-70 per wheel

[MooZ]

Cheers mate,


I would understand why you would rub them down for the first undercoat, but why do you rub them down each coat after that? wouldn't it just take the coat you just put on off? How much do you rub them down? just a little bit to make sure its all level..?

Plus I doubt I could be bothered to take off my Tyres so I'll just use some masking tape or something to keep them nicely covered? That be ok? I might be spraying them black or a dark grey anyway so spillage onto the tyre isn't the end of the world.

Any makes of not too expensive spray paint to use?

Do you have to laqour them? I might look for the matt finish.

[dan23]

Cheers mate,


I would understand why you would rub them down for the first undercoat, but why do you rub them down each coat after that? wouldn't it just take the coat you just put on off? How much do you rub them down? just a little bit to make sure its all level..?

Plus I doubt I could be bothered to take off my Tyres so I'll just use some masking tape or something to keep them nicely covered? That be ok? I might be spraying them black or a dark grey anyway so spillage onto the tyre isn't the end of the world.

Any makes of not too expensive spray paint to use?

Do you have to laqour them? I might look for the matt finish.

the reason you rub them down even with their top coats of colour and laqour is to get any imperfections in the paint out, i.e bubles or runs, but you use finer wet and dry each time and it wont rub the paint off just take any imperfections off, well aslong as you dont keep rubbing the same spot, it only needs a light rub down. you can skip this process out but the wheels will suffer in a final look, depends how fussy you wanna be really.

oh and i forgot to add, bit of common sence but make sure you really get the wheels as clean as you can before hand

[dan23]

there is no need to laqour them if you want a matt finish mate.

and just use normal car spray paint that you can get from any good car shop, i.e halfrauds, total cost in paint and parts will be around £40.

and you dont have to take the tyres off you can just tape them like you say, but if i was you let all the air out of them so you can get to the lip of the alloy, and also put newspaper over the tyre then tape it up