Welcome home, SubZeros...an epic waste of your time by TeLLy
 

Finally got some pics of what will hopefully be the last rims I buy for this car...I've been through so many! My very first rim purchase for her was a set of 17" Rota SubZeros in Royal Gunmetal. Ever since I sold them I've regretted letting them go, and having gone 19" this summer I couldn't just buy another set of 17's anyway. So I sold the 19" ADR Fuels and luckily found a set of SubZeros for sale by APRBoy. However these were in the Royal Silver finish, and I really had my heart set on Royal Gunmetal or Royal Black. Couldn't afford new or even powdercoating, so off to Canadian Tire I sped for several cans of Duplicolor Wheel Coating in graphite, along with the matching clearcoat.

I already had sandpaper from 220 grit all the way to 2000, so I dropped the rims off at my buddy's house, where he washed them and got them ready for the paint process in the garage. The next day I masked off the polished lip (wanted to keep that) while he sanded the spokes, and after a wipedown to remove the sanding dust, we began painting. BTW we didn't sand all the way to the metal, we just scuffed up the finish with 300-grit. That night we laid on 5 coats of the Duplicolor wheel paint, waiting 15 minutes between each coat, all the while smoking cigarettes and running a heat gun over the newly painted surfaces. I've been using this Duplicolor stuff for a while now, it's super-durable, and can yield a show-quality finish if you're patient and careful. After the 5th thin coat, I was getting sleepy, so I went home to resume the project the next evening.

The following night I went straight to my bud's house right after work and I wet-sanded my work till it was almost silky-smooth, getting up to 600 or 800 grit (I forget) before wiping off the spokes and laying on some more of the paint. Let me add here that getting the inside surface of each spoke pair was very hard to do without running. Gah. After another 3 coats or so, we ran the heatgun over the spokes again then started to lay down the clearcoat. We used the Duplicolor Wheel Coating clear coat. Now if anyone is going to read this in preparation for his/her own wheel refinishing project, know that the clear coat in the Duplicolor Wheel Coating runs VERY easily so be sure to apply thin coats.

This is where I decide to ghettofabulize these wheels. I've already seen SubZeros refinished with this exact product and technique and I wanted something just a touch different. I had in my closet a can of pearl additive powder stuff, basically what you would mix with clear and spray for a pearl finish. Now I have no experience in the paint booth and I couldn't afford the rental fee or the equipment anyway and no shop would mix up their clear with this stuff in it for me, it would just clog the nozzle. So I thought "why not dust the stuff onto a still-wet clearcoat". So I took a teeny tiny (tip of a teaspoon) amount of the stuff, dropped it onto a piece of terry cloth, and shook and fluffed it, so that the powder made a cloud directly over the rims and settled. Every 10 minutes I would put on another coat of clear then dust them with the pearl stuff with this method. At this point I wasn't seeing much of a pearl look and I noticed that the stuff wasn't settling on the clearcoat, it was being blown past the rims, and out of the garage. My buddy noticed the small cloud of the stuff from a small spill on the floor, and this was getting on the rims. In my infinite (stoned) wisdom I dumped a bunch of the pearl on the garage floor next to the rims and stomped up and down on it while I passed the rims spraying clearcoat. This actually worked, no fooling. The cloud let the pearl disperse evenly around the rim spokes. Also my whole body shimmered with pearl, I felt like a Chippendales dancer if he was fat and belligerent. After what felt like 6 coats of the pearly clear, I sprayed a couple of coats without the pearl and let the rims sit for an hour or so while my buddy and I talked about the very bad things we were thinking about certain women. I ran a heatgun over the rim spokes to be safe, then wetsanded with 1000-grit sandpaper, followed by a vigorous rubbing compound treatment to get them to gloss up a tiny bit. Laziness dictated that I would only polish the spoke faces, and not the inner sections between each spoke. I think the matte finish looks OK anyway.

Total cost? $40 worth of paint, $10 for the rubbing compound, $8 for a set of terry cloth towels for cleaning, and $10 worth of sandpaper=$68.

So what's the point of all this you ask? Well, I have diarrhea of the keyboard and rims can have a good finish if you're patient. It's an easy DIY to do, and even painting stock rims will make your car looked just that tiny bit more pimped. Just do yourself a favour and consider repainting the careful way before you fork over $50+ per wheel to get them powdercoated.

And now some showoffness:

Rims used to look like this on APRBoy's car:
http://www.7thgencivic.com/memberrid...985slammed.jpg

But not for long.....

Nice and shiny but are those flecks the pearl or the stuff in the wheel paint? I'm really not sure....ha ha, I probably wasted my time.
http://www.7thgencivic.com/memberrid...m/100_0382.JPG

I like how dark they are at night. They look much lighter in sunlight for some reason. I kinda wish I'd made them glossier, but I figure I can apply polishing compound even with the wheels on later.
http://www.7thgencivic.com/memberrid...m/100_0383.JPG

Full car shot. I painted my front grille with this same paint a month ago.
http://www.7thgencivic.com/memberrid...m/100_0386.JPG

Trying to be artistic with the camera. Failing miserably.
http://www.7thgencivic.com/memberrid...m/100_0387.JPG

My good friend the azn_outlaw, whose garage I used, cigarettes I smoked, and floor I stomped pearl in. Thanks so much man. BTW we have to do this to my winter rims next.
http://www.7thgencivic.com/memberrid...m/100_0377.JPG

looks pretty good

came out very professional mann

"while my buddy and I talked about the very bad things we were thinking about certain women."

hahahha

what kind of paint did you use on your grill.

looks hot..do mine..i will be yours forever

very nice.....i bought some gsr wheels a while back to mount my azenis on, used the same paint/color to do em up, then when i went to get the tires mounted, two of them were ****ed up and couldnt be balanced, they wobbled a lot. so i took the wheels back to the junk yard i got em from.

whats did u do to that car...u slaughtered it and put rice all over it...wuts with the canards, front lip, and a cf splitter on the bottom...not bad but it sure is rice

agree. i liked your car when it was nice and clean. now, your car is overdone IMO. but who cares, it's your fvcking car. :D

I didn't see this stuff on anyone else's EL, so I did it to win some points. Admittedly the riciest of my mods, but then again so is modifying a 4-banger in any sense IMO. Thanks though, I still think it looks aggressive, if more than a tad overdone.

nice job, I think it looks alot better than the last pair IMHO.

IMO the car is a bit over done with the graphics and stuff but the rims are nice as hell good job man.

looks sweet telly!! Boourns to all the haters, im getting sick of the whole "rice" thing. That term is getting thrown around as much as "jdm". I could start another rant about this but i dont wanna whore your thread.

Looks pimp, come down so we can see it in person, I know how much you love the roads down here.

OOooh, also its frosh week down here so there are many young'uns.............lol. Yes i am peverted

Thanks Shifty I was in Hamstertownfor dinner with the wifey last night. Scraped my splitter at Iron Chef. I need hubcentric rings still, these things are vibrating and humming all sorts of craziness on the highway.

Ah yes, Mac frosh week. Nubile young girls looking for a good time, and drunk young boys thinking they can provide it. Tsk tsk. Let's go trolling for frosh....don't tell Jen, ha ha ha.