So, in the near future I will be repainting my rims to a gloss black. I need a bit of help as to the proper steps. Heres what I have put together as a gameplan Remove and clean wheels, with acid sand down clear coat with 1500 and working to lighter sandpaper Polish out sanding marks clean with body shop paint prepping cleaner spray with colour coat, spot repair and rebuff as necessary reclean with paint prepping solvent apply clearcoat, (maybe 2 layers) not sure if this is proper but it sort of what I remeber from my time spent in a production paint shop
Everything looks good except for one thing, the "polishing of sanding marks" This doesnt seen right to me. I would actually start off sanding with 1000grit and then move on to 1200 and 1500. What you want to accomplish is to have the surface gritty enough for the paint to grab on to, yet smooth enough that once the paint dries, it will dry smooth and not have that orange peel/golf ball look to it. Of course a great way to determine this is after sanding, to clean off an area and take a clean hand to feel out the surface. At that point it is up to you if you should go to finer grit or go straight to primer, color and clear I helped a friend of mine refinish the faces of his 3piece Work wheels since it had bad knicks all over the face, and after we sanded the faces down and layed the primer, there were still some dips in the surface so we both agreed if his car was going to be show worthy, we would have go all out on the rims as well. So we bought a small bucket of body filler and a tube of "flexible hardener" and we applied it to the areas in question, sanded till surface was level and then sprayed some more primer and went on to color and clear.
Imo powder coating rims is excellent, but unless the surface is "level" it will have that textured look.
