The best method for painting Vector wheels

[MaximRecoil]

I finally got a set of American Racing Vector wheels. They are exactly what I was looking for, i.e., originals (not reissues), 15x7 all around, and in good condition. The only problem was: they were unpainted, and while a few Warner Bros. General Lees did have unpainted Vectors, I always thought they looked odd that way. The spokes stand out a lot better when they are painted; it is the right "look" for General Lee wheels in my opinion.

The first order of business was to clean them up. For this I used my favorite metal cleaner: Bar Keepers Friend, along with a nylon bristle brush. BKF cuts through everything quickly, including oxidation, due to its active ingredient: oxalic acid. It has been around for about 130 years, and it is cheap (about $2 a can, in the original powder form), and readily available at most any grocery store. It also makes an awesome electrical contact cleaner, but that is another topic altogether.

Once I got them clean, I didn't know how I was going to achieve the proper two-tone effect (i.e., rough-cast areas painted, machined areas unpainted). I wanted the lines between the painted and unpainted areas to look as sharp and neat as on Vector wheels that were painted at the factory. Of course, at the factory they have it easy, because they paint the entire wheel after it is cast, and then they machine them, which automatically removes the paint in the process, with perfect lines by default.

My initial plan was to use masking tape. After spending about a half hour and only getting that center "ring" half taped off, I started thinking, "This will take forever and a day". You have to cut the tape into a thin strip so it can go around a curve, and because it is pretty much impossible to cut it with scissors perfectly straight and exactly the width you need, you have to do it in two halves, i.e., do the right "lane" of the circle first with a thin strip, then do the left "lane" of the circle with another thin strip, and tediously keeping the factory-cut edge of each strip perfectly aligned with each edge of the circle.

Plus, I saw the results of someone else who used masking tape to paint some Vector wheels, and they ended up with some paint bleeds:

1. http://www.datman.co.uk/rr/vector5-5-14--13.jpg

2. http://www.datman.co.uk/rr/vector5-5-14--15.jpg

And here's what he had to say about the second picture:

And this was after paint, literally just after removing the masking, so there was a bit of glue and a couple of small paint bleeds, gives a good idea though

He also said:

It's INCREDIBLY time consuming and painful, and if you want them to stay decent you need to keep on top of them, keeping them cleaned/polished once everyone-2 weeks (maybe even more often) on a daily driver.

"INCREDIBLY time consuming and painful" is no exaggeration, especially since he masked four wheels (and he also did a ton of polishing, which I could thankfully skip, because General Lee wheels were never polished beyond the factory machined finish anyway). When I realized that I didn't have the patience for masking tape, I almost said, "Screw it, I'll just leave them unpainted".

Vaseline was the second thing I tried, but I was skeptical, because I've heard of other people doing that when painting Vectors, and at least some of them said they didn't care for the results. I could envision the inherent problem with doing it that way before I even tried it, and I only covered about an inch of metal with Vaseline before my suspicions were confirmed. The problem is: the Vaseline pools at the edges when you spread it thin with your finger, which would result in jagged transition lines between the painted and unpainted areas, and there is really no way to avoid it; it is just physics at work. If you try to wipe off the excess along the edges, you inevitably get some of it on the parts on the sides where you want paint to stick.

Then I remembered a post from this thread on CGLFC.com:

i always sprayed mine semigloss and when your ready to spray spray the whole rim and wipe off spokes and rim parts with thinner or mineral spirits that will save time of getting all the vasoline off...i think the ones on the show were blk but were often very dirty and looked grey?

I didn't expect it to work very well, because I figured that if I didn't keep the rag perfectly flat against the machined areas as I was wiping the paint off, i.e., if the rag made any contact with the recessed areas that I wanted to keep paint on, it would wipe the paint off there too and I'd have a mess. However, I was out of options, so I went down to the hardware store and bought some paint thinner (mineral spirits).

As it turned out, it worked perfectly, and I didn't even have to be particularly careful/precise when doing it. The reason it worked so well is because the machined areas of the wheel are smooth, while the recessed areas have a relatively rough texture. This makes it so the paint is easily removed from the smooth areas, while it would be difficult to remove from the rough areas. So even if you aren't 100% precise while wiping off the paint, the results are still perfect, because to remove paint from the areas you don't want to remove it from, you'd really have to work at it.

Here are the results:

This is the first one I painted, next to one of the unpainted and uncleaned ones:



And all four painted:



I couldn't be more pleased with the results.

By the way, the paint I used was Rust-Oleum Satin Black (#7777) in a rattle can, three coats on each wheel.

[tan top]

     look real  good  !! nice work   

[bill440rt]

They came out nice. Sounds like a bit of work.

3M FineLine tape has always worked for me. Comes in various widths, conforms nicely around curves.
http://www.tcpglobal.com/3m/3m400-3.aspx

[MaximRecoil]

They came out nice. Sounds like a bit of work.

The most work involved was cleaning them prior to painting (I wanted to get every nook and cranny as clean as I could, so I used an old toothbrush dipped in a solution of Bar Keeper's Friend and water). Wiping the paint off the machined areas with a thinner-dampened rag was the easiest part. It took a bit of time (because you have to keep switching to a clean section of the rag every few inches), but it wasn't precise, careful, or fiddly work, and there was next to no chance of messing it up.

3M FineLine tape has always worked for me. Comes in various widths, conforms nicely around curves.
http://www.tcpglobal.com/3m/3m400-3.aspx

Yes, that's what I wanted when I bought some masking tape in the first place, but of course, my local hardware store didn't have any such thing. But even if I'd had some, it still would have been an incredibly tedious, careful, precise job masking 4 wheels with tape, and the best I could have hoped for was to equal the results that I got easily with the paint thinner, because those results were perfect.

Now, the paint thinner method I used would not work well for just any type of wheel. The reason it worked so well for original Vector wheels is because the areas to be left unpainted are smooth, and the areas to be left painted are rough, so that creates a natural tendency for the paint to easily wipe off the smooth areas, and not easily wipe off the rough areas. This, combined with the fact that all of the painted-to-unpainted transition lines are physically defined by ~90 degree edges, makes getting perfect results with the paint thinner method, foolproof.

In cases where the painted-to-unpainted transition lines you wish to create are not physically defined by anything, and/or the entire wheel is uniformly smooth, you'd have to use masking tape for clean results.

[bill440rt]

Oh.

[dangina]

looks great

[miamivice]

nice work!   be sure to post some pictures once they are mounted up on your charger too!

[MaximRecoil]

nice work!   be sure to post some pictures once they are mounted up on your charger too!

Thanks. I already have them on my car; it's just that my car isn't very "photogenic". It's a beater, and probably always will be. I figure I'll at least paint it all one color someday, but the bodywork will always be very rough. In any event, here it is:



I do wish I could straighten that hood; as you can see it is bowed up a bit on the driver's side. I don't know how to straighten it any more than I already have though. It was a lot worse, as can be seen in these pictures:





The trees are in the way, but if you look closely, you can see that the hood was bent down on the driver's side at about a 45 degree angle.