Refinishing eureo weaves- Questions

[RainierHooker]

@ Nando...

Since you aren't too far from Everett, you might wanna look at Pacific Performance Coatings. They gave me the best estimate for the last set of wheels I had refurbed. Total cost with blasting and P-coat and clear was 350 out the door, and turn around was 3 days. The wheels turned out spectacular looking...

[straight6pwr]

i bought and refinished a set of euroweaves in april. heres a quick run down i wrote for another curious member.

Its really a simple process, just time consuming. If you can afford (or can get a good deal) to get your wheels media blasted, it will save you most of the hassle. Anyways, my process: If you dont want polished lips, skip to step 4.

1)Stripped clear coat/paint off of the lip. I use a spray can of aircraft paint stripper with steel wool/scuff pads/plastic scrapper. Make sure you don't spray the stripper on the wheel faces as you will have to attempt to do the whole thing to even it out.
If you look at my picture again you'll see the lip is actually polished. It is a light polish (not a mirror finish). I think this really helps make the wheel look cleaner/newer. It matches very closely to the paint, but in certain sunlight you get the contrast between the two.

2)Grind down any curb rash. I use a Dremel. Get it as even as you can just to hide the rash. Mine didnt really have heavy rash, so I didnt have to remove to much metal to even it out. I used a heavy grit sand paper to even the rash area to the rest of the lip (80-100 grit).

3)Polish the wheel lip. Start with a low grit to work out blemishes/scratches. (100) Go over the whole lip once. Then step to a higher grit, then a higher one, etc. (100-320-600-1000). Then I took some light steel wool for the final buff. Use a good metal polish and some elbow grease to give them a deep shine!

4)For the painted area of the wheels, all I did was scuff up the old paint so the new would stick to it. If you have polished your lips, mask them off now with a couple layers of tape so you dont scratch them! (OEM bmw wheel paint sticks to the wheel like glue, so short of a media blast, you dont want to attempt to sand it all off). I used 320 grit to scuff the old paint. You have to really work into all the groves of the weave. (this is the time consuming part). Get the old paint to a nice dull finish.

5)Clean the sanded area of the wheel up with a tack cloth to get all the dust out of all the nooks and crannies.

6)Spray your paint. I used Duplicolor wheel paint. (they only make one kind which comes in different colors). Use light coats. Getting into all the gaps is hard so make sure to attack the wheel from all angles. Just keep doing light coats until you can see you have covered everything well. I had to cover gold paint, so it was easier to see where I had covered. Then do one heavier coat. This will produce a glossier look as the paint is a metallic paint and can look really rough if applied too lightly. Obviously, follow the re-coat times on the spray can for time in-between coats.

7)Clear coat. A couple coats will do just fine.

8.)Let that shit dry! Any DIY paint job is going to be WAY softer than professionally done. Give it a week at least before mounting. A good thing to keep in mind: If you can put your nose right next to the paint and still smell it, its not dry. Then remember, the paint will ALWAYS be softer than OEM wheel painting. If you hit your wheel with your lug nut wrench, its going to mark up your paint. (this is the downside to DIY).

-I never want to refinish a weave style wheel again.

Hope this helps!

Dan

Here are before and after:

[herlsy]

I'm in the process of doing my 15s also, so far just been sandblasting, even with a sandblaster it's a pain in the ass getting in the tight spots on the spokes. It also reveals how much curb rash is actually in the old, thick coating, once the coating was gone so was the nastiness of the rash.

The plan is to powdercoat once prepped.