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If you are doing it yourself, get a good, hard paint. A wheel paint or farm vehicle paint will stand up OK. General spray paint is probably not the best, as the wheels take a serious beating.
Better:
Have a professional paint shop paint them, as they know the right prep, have the right tool and materials, plus have the best paint and know how to best apply it.
Best:
Get them sandblasted, then powdercoated. That will be the most durable finish.
Now those are in the order of cheapest to most expensive.
For my Miata, I did all three. I spray painted some wheels yellow with decent spray paint. It held up "ok," but didn't adhere as well as I originally hopes. I had a set painted next, for cheap. That held up better. I had some nice powdercoated yellow wheel, but they were 14" and I couldn't get the tires I wanted in the right size. I currently run some factory-powdercoated black Chapperal (mini-lite style) wheels with a polished lip on the Miata. That was over a 10 year period.
I am going to paint my steelies soon. The factory paint is aging rather fast in direct sunlight. I am presently planning to spraypaint them with either wheel paint or farm-equipment paint, and may "two-tone" them. I'm going to use the crappy rim (a mis-match) -that I got from ebay and had to later replace- as a paint test.
Now, to decide the color scheme . . .
(I am thinking of basing it on the two-tone scheme used on very old VW Beetles and Buses/Transporters/Kombis.)
If I was painting nice alloys, I would have them powdercoated.
Better:
Have a professional paint shop paint them, as they know the right prep, have the right tool and materials, plus have the best paint and know how to best apply it.
Best:
Get them sandblasted, then powdercoated. That will be the most durable finish.
Now those are in the order of cheapest to most expensive.
For my Miata, I did all three. I spray painted some wheels yellow with decent spray paint. It held up "ok," but didn't adhere as well as I originally hopes. I had a set painted next, for cheap. That held up better. I had some nice powdercoated yellow wheel, but they were 14" and I couldn't get the tires I wanted in the right size. I currently run some factory-powdercoated black Chapperal (mini-lite style) wheels with a polished lip on the Miata. That was over a 10 year period.
I am going to paint my steelies soon. The factory paint is aging rather fast in direct sunlight. I am presently planning to spraypaint them with either wheel paint or farm-equipment paint, and may "two-tone" them. I'm going to use the crappy rim (a mis-match) -that I got from ebay and had to later replace- as a paint test.
Now, to decide the color scheme . . .
(I am thinking of basing it on the two-tone scheme used on very old VW Beetles and Buses/Transporters/Kombis.)
If I was painting nice alloys, I would have them powdercoated.
