Painting the rusty steel wheels for winter
I know - every post seems to be about the new Subaru. Well, it’s new and I’m positively enamored with it and it needs a few things. One of those things is acceptable winter wheels! I had a set of old, rusty, black 16" steelies from the girlfriend’s old Cavalier, and they would do nicely for the winter once cleaned up and painted.
Let me start by saying that this would be much easier to do if the wheels weren’t already mounted with tires. However, I didn’t feel like paying the tire guys twice so they got painted with rubber already attached.
Here’s a shot of the condition these things were in before I started on them. The bottom wheel is untouched, and the top one has been given a quick wire brushing with the best tool ever, my angle grinder, with a wire brush cup attachment. This thing seriously makes short work of removing rust and paint, in the areas that it can fit.
The angle grinder took off the majority of the rust, and that was followed up with a wire wheel on my drill, which was followed up with wire brushing and sanding by hand. That was followed by a good cleaning with Simple Green to get off any oil or grease remaining. When painting anything, the time spent in preparation really pays off on the final product.
There was quite a lot of work put into rust removal, and for people less cheap than I am it might have just made more sense to buy new wheels!
The next step is masking, which was again a lot of work. Both sides had to be masked right up to the lip of the wheel, which required lots of little pieces of masking tape. The insides of the wheel got a thick layer of my usual go-to paint, semi-gloss black brush-on Tremclad enamel.
After a day of drying time they were flipped over. A few paint drips from the brushed-on inside had to be scraped off. More masking was applied for the spraying (spraying paint leaves a much nicer finish than brushing, but costs a lot more and is messier!). I found some epoxy appliance paint that I thought would hold up well on the wheels, and you can see it here:
Make sure you wear a mask while spraying this stuff - it really floats in the air. Masks are not helped by beards, however:
This is about as close to a self-portrait as you will see on this blog.
Enamel paints can take a long time to cure, and are helped by heat and a dry air. If you can find a corner of the house to hide the wheels in for a few days (or weeks), do it!
I left mine for a few weeks to get fully cured. Luckily it would be a while before they were needed.
De-masking left a really nice finish on the outside:
And an acceptable finish on the inside:
Yes, there are drips and white overspray, but for the inside of the wheels I really don’t care. The paint is only there to protect from rust.
Finally mounted up - I really like the white!
Cost breakdown:
