does anyone know what paint to use. do i need a special kind paint or can i just some paint from autozone. i want to do them like the ones on the 97 SS wheels.

 

Hm, probably not the paint from AZ. Something with a higher quality maybe. FYI the white wheels were on Z28s as well.

 

You could get em powdercoated, but that might be expensive. I know that epoxy's are very hard, chip resistant paints but dont tend to hold up well in the sun. So I wouldnt use an expoxy paint. Might try www.eastwood.com they sell a lot of spcialty painting and coating things. I ordered my paint for my rally 2's on my old gto from here.

 

Rattle can will work and can be done to look good, but if you have a compressor you might as well get some paint and spray it.

Powder coating isn't very expensive. Whats expensive is paying for the labor to strip the wheel so they can powder coat it.

 

I had my 16" Zr1's powdercoated.....they turned out GREAT!!!!!

 

I would never powdercoat a set of aluminum wheels

Read up some on metallurgy and read about heat treatings and what not. I guess it's just a side effect of working in a machine shop for a while, my boss was like a walking genius when it comes to metals and the whole process... He's still one of my best friends to this day. He also explained to me why Eagle forged pistons aren't as good as they seem, their heat treat process involves them passing under a heat lamp on a conveyer... that's it.

Anyway, example of what could go wrong with powerder coating aluminum wheels:

 

eeew thats nasty, that had to have hurt bad, any other pics from that blow out?

 

I was always under the impression that all aluminum wheels were powder coated from the factory, maybe the process is different?

I think GOD just wanted to punish the person for painting those vette wheels red! lol J/k

 

I've seen a lot of powder coated Al wheels and none of them have ever done that. Even some manufacturers powder coat Al wheels, but stock wheels are painted. IIRC American Racing sells teflon coated wheels.

 

If done right, powder coating aluminum can be safe, but $20 says finding a shop to powder coat at such a low temp will be hard to find if not impossible, plus the powder doesn't stand up as well... Lots of guys have powder coated their wheels without problems, but lots of those guys don't stress their wheels at all either. From my standpoint, I'll never PC a set of alum. wheels.

 

Wow.

 

Not to argue, but I've seen pics of stock painted wheels that break like this. So is it the wheel/manufacturing process or the powdercoating?

 

Stock painted? As in stock wheels that were painted or stock color stock wheels? And if they were stock wheels that were painted are you sure they were painted and not powdercoated? This is a stock C5 wheel that broke around a turn, no curb hitting, no nothing, just pushing around a corner.

 

Stock GM C5 wheels. Painted not chromed. I've seen some chrome Z06 wheels look like those too.