i wanna get your opinions. It's snowing up here now, and i'm taking my 17's off this week. I'm buying either studded snows or blizzaks and putting them on my old wheels. here's the thing. when i got in an accident this fall, decent sized chunks got taken out of 2 of the wheels (little smaller than the size of taking a bite out of an apple) and all 4 were curbed here and there when i bought the car.

SO, i was thinking about painting the wheels flat black. (2nd gen tib and wheels) Sorta like saying, "I know these wheels are craptacular, but i need to have snow tires on." Sorta like when you see tricked out cars rolling on black steelies in the winter and you KNOW that their rims are in their garage at home. The last thing i want to do is drive around with messed up wheels looking like i don't care about the appearance of my car. I don't have the cash to buy new 15's at all (in fact, the snow tires are a gift), so, uh, yeah. what do i do?

 

Since you're getting snow tires, and still have the stockies laying around, I say go for it. Who cares about how the stockers look since you have some nice clean show rims sitting at home. If you want to paint your rims, I would however, try and warm them up. If it's snowing there, then I would imagine it has to be around 30-40° or colder. Not exactly good weather to paint in. *lol* You want it to be at least 55° where you paint or else the paint will not stick properly and look really bad when you apply it to the rims. But you can go to a few automotive stores and buy wheel coating for like 3-4 bux a can. Buy a couple cans, heat up your rims, or leave them inside your house for a couple of days before painting them outside or in the garage, and have a feild day. But if it were me, I wouldn't even care about painting them since alot of people put messed up rims or stockies on for the winter.

Good luck... wink

 

If you are going to paint them...put the new tires on, then paint them. Otherwise you run the risk of the wheel install gorillas chipping/scuffing your paint off, especially around the edge/bead area of the rim. Just tape off the tire itself, then paint them.

And as Vision said...make sure you are above 50 F before attempting painting.

If you do choose to paint them after tire installation, you will have to clean them again, as they always manage to smear tire bead sealant all over the place.

 

thanks guys, i'll wait to get em mounted and then i'll take em off and paint them in my friend's heated garage.