Winter will be here soon and I'll be taking off my 18s with summer rubber and putting my stock 5 spoke 17s back on. Since I'll be driving this car for another 2 to 3 years, I've decided I'm going to paint my silver 17s black. My question is, I've got factory paint left over from painting the lower sills on my car, however, the paint is gloss black and is a single stage paint (ie clear and base are all-in-one). With spray gun application, the paint will adhere a lot better, but I fear the gloss black won't look quite right (ie probably needs to be flatter or at least semi-gloss). The car will be very black with the wheels because the chrome moldings are now blacked out. What do you guys think? Should I make the paint a little less glossy? If so, how would I go about taking gloss out?

Current


OEM 17s, chrome window trim

 

i did my 6 spokes in matte black with a red lip, they look incredible and match?offset the blacked out handels and trim really well. im running 17" coupe wheels in teh rear with 10mm spacers on OEM sedan wheels in the front. and my winter setup is the same coupe wheels only in 7.5" (coupe fronts) they are painted in bronze and look bad *** as well.

 

I painted mine with flat black primer. Everyone that seems them thinks that they're powder coated. I tried using the Duplicolor wheel paint, but I wasn't satisfied with the consistency of the spray and it was a bit too glossy. I'm also running 20mm spacers all around and it pulled them out pretty well. I do not have any rubbing, either and my fenders are not rolled.

-Jerome

 

Here is my X on non-staggered 4 coupe 19inch rears (19x8.5) powdercoated glossy black. Sorry pictures suck because lighting isn't there to see the spokes, but I love the end product. I picked powdercoating over paint to avoid chips. I love how yu blacked out the chrome trim, that's my next mod. How did you do it? Take them off and sand then paint? Please share...

 

By the way, I had the guy powdercoat one wheel matte black to see how it looks, and I changed my mind quick to go with the glossy black look.

 

im getting ready to do mine too.yalls really look good!

 

I have seen a number of gloss black cars around here with gloss black wheels and I think it looks awesome. I think gunmetal, semi-gloss and flat look good on other colors but on black, gloss black looks the best.

 

did you see mine?

 

don't do it dave, it'll be too 'blacked out' IMO. Maybe go for a grey/gunmetal color at the darkest...

 

do it, it looks sick. . .especially in the winter when they'll just get dirty anyways! i used dupi color, got it from autozone. . .if you choose the "low gloss" black paint (engine enamel), black primer, and the wheel clear coat, it gives your rims just enough gloss to satisfy your "gloss" needs, but not over doing it.

 

That was my reasoning It's a winter setup. The OEM 17s are a bit flat after 6 years of life and 6 Midwest winters and they needed to be finished. Since I've got a lot of OEM black paint left over from painting the lower sills, I figured why not use it? Over the winter, the car is usually dirty and flat black over 50% of the time so why not make the wheels look the same and go for a somewhat "murdered out" (hate the term) look? It's something entirely different compared to my more bling spring/summer/fall setup.

If I don't like it, then I'll buy some anthracite paint and reshoot them.

 

see my DIY

 

Go for it. Unless you plan on using that paint for anything else, you have nothing to lose by using it on your wheels.

 

Dave, do you have a powder coater near you?... It's relatively inexpensive, and will hold up better... looks better IMO too.

 

I do have a great powder coater I can use, but it's about $60 a rim, but their wait is around 2 months on rims. There's a local guy with a Viper, C6 Z06, TechArt 911, and E46 M3 and he's painted all the OEM rims on his cars black with rattle can. His wheels look great and all his cars endure road racing out at Heartland Park. I'll probably use his painting process except I'll be using more resilent paint compared to rattle can paint. If it doesn't come out the way I want, I paint them titanium.