whats up guys! I've been wanting to refinish my rims back to the factory color for a while now. I'm a college student so since I'm on a relatively tight budget, I've decided to do it myself. Considering I usually do all the repairs on my jag myself I'm looking foward to it! Now, I've seen a couple different types of paint used on this site to refinish different rims but I want to get that sparkle paint like what is on the originals. What would you guys recommend? From what I've read, its a hard color and finish to match. Thanks in advance!

 

Go talk to a powdercoating specialist in your area and see what they have that matches up. I have experience with most every commercially available wheel paint, and powdercoating is the only one that holds up. And most every powdercoater these days has access to so many colors, they'll be able to find something that matches closely, especially in silver. And honestly, even though it's a bit more money, I'd highly, HIGHLY recommend having your wheels media-blasted and powdercoated. I've refinished 2 sets of wheels by hand, and it is not a pleasant experience. Your hands will hurt for weeks, and while the off the shelf wheel paints are strong, they aren't as strong as powdercoating. When I refinished by hand, it only took me about $100 a set, but about 3 weeks of hard work. When I took a set to the powdercoater, the finished product looked just as good with a more durable finish, it required zero work on my part, was turned around in 2 days, and only cost $350 for both the blasting and powdercoating. It's more money, but you end up with a better result with a ton less work.

 

Thanks for the advice, in all honesty I would much rather want to do that but dropping $350 isn't ideal for me right now. Plus I don't mind putting in the work to save some $$. From what I've seen tho, it's taken about 2-3 days tops to do the complete refinish and I have about a week to get it done so I'm not too worried about the time aspect either.

 

Hey there, WURTH do a great line in automotive paints and other products, highly recommend them.

When I refinished the X type wheels some years ago, I initially used a cheap paint & lacquer and ending up redoing them.

WURTH is the way to go if you can get it, they do a sparkle or Hyper Silver that will probably do what you want it to do, match wise.

Tip - sand, sand, sand & sand again until your fingers bleed to get the best results possible and a very light sanding with 2500 grit perhaps in between coats

 

The powder coating route is the pro route, fit and forget like factory finish, but if it's a tight budget constraint job as it sounds Jim's bang on with Worth products and in particular the hyper silver.

I've not tried it myself but the trick to get a factory looking finish is a very light coloured primer coat, i.e. white or near. Use and etch primer and lots of fine coats instead of a couple of heavy, try to avoid runs at all costs and spend time masking the tires.
Build the worth silver up the same way, you want to just cover the primer to get the factory effect.
To do it right takes time, just cleaning each wheel ready to paint could take a couple of laborious hours - maybe attempt one each spare evening at the end of the week it'll be done without too many blisters...

hope that helps

 

Thanks for the replies guys! I've heard good things about wurth in the past so that what I was thinking of going with, good to know that you all approve! I'll post pics when finished.

 

Here's a few DIY's from the forum that may offer some guidance / advice


Repairing alloy wheels - Jaguar Forums - Jaguar Enthusiasts Forum

How to refurb your own alloys - Page 5

https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/x...=refurb+alloys


Good luck

 

If you want to go cheap with a removable result, get aluminum colored plasti-dip spray, i got mine from dipyourcar.com. You can spray your wheel with a durable rubber coating and if you don't like it it will peel right off leaving whatever you painted in-tact.

I am a big fan of powdercoating as well, I have some cars that I have powder coating nearly everything I could unbolt - but this works great in a pinch and yields excellent results.