Okay, update today. I had a chance to finally plasti-dip the wheels. Overall, I think it came out pretty good. Makes me feel confident about doing the whole car next. There are a couple "gotchas" to look out for, and if you are interested in doing this, I highly recommend a couple tips. I'll list them after the pictures. Now, the pictures!!
The wheels after the dip:
The car, as it now sits:
Alright, so I did run into a few snags. Here's my suggestions if you plan on dipping your wheels:
- Wash your wheels the day/night before, not the day of. On the day of painting, you run the risk of having water somewhere.
- When you wash, use a pressure washer. I used a hose (even though I have a pressure washer). It worked okay. Pressure washer would have been better.
- Use flash cards to mask off the tire. Vids on youtube show people just spraying on the tire, and then peeling it off. This is bull crap. The only way that really works is if you lay on heavy with the overspray on the tire. In my case, I didn't get a lot of overspray on the tire. Thus the plasti-dip is still on the tires, because it was too much of a pain to remove. This worked for me because I did black. If you are doing a color, I highly recommend flash cards to mask off the tire.
- Use compressed air (and lots of it) on the wheels before you dip, especially around the valve stems. I still had a little bit of water, and it's peeling a bit there.
- Use the prep that you can buy from DipYourCar. You can maybe use simple green, or something like that. But the wheels felt tacky after I used the prep stuff, so I'm thinking there's something in there to help the dip adhere to the wheel.
- Either use a nozzle gun thing or take breaks between wheels. My finger/hand was hurting after spraying all four wheels all the way through.
That's all I got right now. If I think of more, I'll update this list.
Edit: I went to a car meet tonight and talked with a dude that also plasti-dipped his wheels earlier. Apparently he left them on the car, didn't mask a thing, and just sprayed them. I have no idea how much prep he did - but after hearing what he did (I get the feeling this wasn't his first time), and then looking at my list of what should be done...yeah. Maybe I'm being a perfectionist? I don't know. What I do know, is that I'll follow my list next time, even though maybe it's overkill.
