Paint our Jeep Cj-7 wheels

Paint our Jeep CJ-7 aluminum wheels

Well Of all the stuff we’ve done to our CJ little is documented. 99% of which will never be seen or appreciated ('cept by us). As it is with most customizing. Folks who don’t work on their own stuff have no clue what is actually involved in custom work, or why we do it. Only the visual exterior part you see. I think that’s why folks are so tight within any given group whether it be tuners, low riders, wheelers or whatever. It’s an appreciation in sharing what it took-those long hours of Imagineering, designing, fabricating, 'till the wee hours wrenching and the trial & error to make it work.
This isn’t about any of that, simply painting wheels.

Changed our wheels several years ago to aluminum. Poor old steel wheels were just beat. Getting out of round, hard to balance. Bead lip got to the point even hammering flat again couple weren’t holding air. Plus living next to the ocean-rust was more prevalent than the chrome. Had to replace, due to the rust opted to go aluminum-At the time not much more cost than another set of steel wheels. I only bought 6 (4 on jeep- 2 for the trailer)-had one of the steel wheels and odd tire for spare. But I’ve never really liked aluminum wheels-to me just a huge chunk of raw metal. I also missed and thought it looked better with old style 'modular' black wheel centers. Always thought I’d try painting but difficult to take a perfectly good set of wheels and 'paint' them.

Recently I ruined a tire. Had the odd spare on the jeep, kinda looked funny. Also when I put the ruined tire on rack & its alum. wheel it didn’t really fit well, the offset is about 1/2" shallower and wheel barley caught studs on rack. But I REALLY didn’t like the look of aluminum wheel on the rack. When I got home decided to try and find a matching tire, redo the rack so aluminum wheel fit better and use matching alum wheel from our jeep trailer on rack for spare (which we'll not be using anymore ).That and look at painting.

Looking around on line a lot more folks painting their wheels than I imagined. But all using basically same method. Clean, sand, mask, etch prime, paint & clear coat. We talked about it and decided to try painting same color as jeep instead of black. Also as seen, I’m quite hard on the wheels so I didn’t want to paint perimeter, all only centers, plus I like the look. So I’m painting. If you search the net-'painting aluminum wheels" etc. you’ll find a lot of good info and get familiar on how most folks are doing and results. This is just what I did to ours, rattle canning in the back yard.

Materials: available auto parts and local hardware

#1 time- hardest part for me-don’t rush, I’d do a wheel at a time, at one point had 2 wheels out didn’t save any time. Time to wash, time to dry, time to sand-time to mask, time between coats, time between paints, time....took me 2 (6 hour) days to do 5 wheels,
Cleaning supplies. Soap, paint thinner, wax& grease remover, 3m pads, clean rags, rubbing alcohol, wash brush, small Stainless steel wire brush, whatever else.
Primer: self-etching. Though some will say it’s not true etching primer it does stick better than grey sanding primer etc.
Sand paper: wet 320 grit is recommended
Masking: paper, tape. Newspaper works but can leak and makes fibers/dust and come apart while handling. Plastic works for large areas, but paint can flake off, make a mess if paints wet so try to keep back from paint line. Roll of masking paper is pretty cheap,
Paint: Several actual wheel paints to choose from but limited in colors. (mostly wheel paints tolerate a higher heat range)
clear coat, unless you’re using an quality enamel paint (i.e. Rustoleum etc.)

Notes: etching primer (badaz stuff-wear at min a particle mask, respirator if you have one. Don’t use in confined space. The paint wasn’t too bad-but a lot of dust, clear was quite hard on eyes & lungs.

Prepping wheels

Wash:
So getting ready to paint my first step was to wash. Second only to sanding. Seriously washed using dish soap, rinse , wash. I had some tsp and some other paint prep stuff but unsure effect on unpainted polished surfaces. My wheels are large hole so inside of wheel very visible. If you’ve a ton of grease might not be worth the effort, mine weren’t too bad. First the back side of tire & wheel, stiff bristle brush, then fine wire brush to back of wheel and 3m green. Then did the front. I didn’t want to spread any contaminants in handling tire so used different 3m pads (on inside hole cast surfaces only) and clean brushes on fronts. Then I flipped and rewashed the back of wheel, then rewashed the fronts with particular attention to the hole cast holes surfaces with small wire brush, . The final wash of fronts was to wheel only. let dry. I then wiped down face with paint thinner. I then wiped and dried area that tape line was going with acetone.

Sanding:
Don’t skimp here. When I decided where paint line was going to go (took longer than sanding 1st wheel), With wheel laying on the ground I started with running paper carefully around paint line edge then worked in a bit so when I got serious in sanding face didn’t need to get close to paint line (and scratch polished area that wasn’t getting painted). I like to have water trickling when wet sanding. 320 is recommended but I had a huge amount off 400 wet paper so that what I used primarily. I used 320 initially to round off corners around holes etc. then sanded out with 400. I sanded in one direction, clockwise around wheel. Then switched and sanded counterclockwise. I found in sanding, especial at holes the starting stroke ended up light-changing directions seemed to counter this. Once you start sanding hard to see where you’ve been and how much, Get a method and pattern going makes it simpler for me to insure coverage. With wheel still flat I rewashed and let air dry.

Plan almost change here. The wheels sanded out with 'satin' centers and high gloss outer looked awesome. Briefly though of using semi-gloss or satin clear. Nah stick to plan. But if I could do a better job in sanding uniformly....

sanded

Masking:
Well as mentioned-where I wanted paint to stop was hardest decision. I would have liked to run paint past the dished center and on to the outside lip (where stem is), made a narrower polished perimeter. But there’s a few nicks on this surface so decided to run dished center only. Would be easier to mask at dish edge. However easier to draw line at this point, masking tape wasn’t going to work as surface is a flat tight radial surface. I have some fine line tape but not enough. As AZ didn’t have any I bought 1/4" pin striping tape. This worked well for laying nice clean line. Keeping about a 2-3" lead ahead of tape as its laid down with one finger and "slightly" stretching and pulling around curve I managed to get nice fairly uniform circle. Not perfect but visually good. Pulling too tight it’ll pull up, not enough and it won’t flow around and lay flat. At any rate by 4th wheel got fairly good with it. Masked inside center hole and taped lug nut holes.

I then wrapped face & tread in newspaper to about 3" near taped line. I also roughly papered inside perimeter of wheel to keep paint off. Then I used masking paper and green (or blue) tape to run onto the plastic pinstripe tape.

(NOTE I want to remove all the masking EXCEPT the thin line tape after painting. Allowing controlled removal at paint line. I found after 1st wheel when using the plastic tape, when removing after painting the paint can peel off, so rest of wheels I run paper masking tape on top as close ( to within a 1/16") to edge as I could. Try not to lift/ reposition tape on top, may pull your vinyl tape underneath. As the masking tape is going to have to be folded to get around the circle won’t be perfect-just be aware the more the plastic pinstripe tape is exposed the more likely paint on it will peel and deposit back onto painted surface.

At any rate just masking-not rocket science but tape laying and removal can ruin an otherwise perfect paint job. Once masking done I wiped with mineral spirits and dried with CLEAN cloth, then I wiped with rubbing alcohol and another clean cloth. Stood tire to paint, as I’m outside don’t want too much dust settling onto face. I marked the tire into quarter marks as I’ll be rolling tire to paint....

Painting wheels

This takes a while, 10 minutes between coats, 30 minutes between products. 3 products. Don’t start if you can’t finish. Basically I did 2 light 2 medium light coats each product, rolling wheel 1/4 turn for coverage. 3 products. Applying too heavy final product easier to chip and/or doesn’t want to dry. Shake the cans-them shake some more. You cannot over shake the cans, hold upside down roll the ball to top a while, shake some more-insure shaking intermittently while using.

-Primer: First primer coat and final clear coat are most important to me. I see where a lot of folks were dusting on 1st primer coat. Not sure with etching primer this best method. I tried for uniform coverage on first coat though kept semi light wanted it 'wet' enough to bite, allowed 15 min before recoating. Subsequent coats will melt into previous coats allowing to build up without running. Also on mine the holes are fairly deep, after spraying face I sprayed 1st few product coats from the back side to ensure coverage in holes. Final coats I didn’t so I didn’t 'dust' the face. On the face, start off the edge, spray across always moving and off the edge then let off. Back & forth until its covered starting and ending off the edge. As I passed holes I rotated the can a bit in the direction traveling trying to make sure to hit that face of hole as I passed. Don’t get too focused on this, easily get it to wet, pick it up on the next coat. final coat let set for 30 min.

Primed

-Color. I went with duplicolr to match jeeps 89 Taurus Spruce green paint. Same process, several light coats-spraying from back to insure color in holes on 1st few coats To get the color & uniform depth I quickly sprayed, rotate tire 90° then quickly again so each 'coat' consisted of opposing passes. Has a lot of black pearl so tad more coats, again 10 min in-between coats. another 30 min set time.

color

-Clear, The VHT is nice seems good product-but the nozzle on can sucked, very small round pattern. Partially due to spraying inside a dish but difficult to get a good overlap without getting too heavy. On last coat I waited min 15 min then sprayed a fairly medium wet coat for smoothness. Again 10 min between coats let set for 30 min after final coat.

Myself I pull tape while paint is soft. Too soon and paint will goo and pull- too late and it can flake/pull. I waited 30 min. surface should be touch dry (test on paper) -I leaned the wheel outward so dust didn’t fall onto wheel and pulled all the paper & tape except tape & paper on paint line tape. Then pulled remaining paper &/tape carefully pulling at 180 off and away from paint line tape. Then I laid wheel down, carefully pulling at 180° and away from paint. This allowed tape to 'cut' and doesnt pull paint upward, any peeling or rolling of paint on tape was away from wheel paint. Not how to do it-just what works for me. Only 4 more to go!

Made center caps-Well cut old ones I had to make "shorties". I have flanged axles (no external hub) in the rear so the 4 1/2" tall center caps served no purpose other than getting whacked. No one really makes a nice shorty for the 4 1/4" centers. Kinda reminds me of a 40's wheel look- I like it (plus free)

"New" shorty caps

Lightly clamp in towel end for end-used air cut off as slow as I could get it so when it cocked stall wheel instead of throwing cap across the floor. Ha. Insert into wheel after cutting and slowly hammered into back side wheel bevel to reshape cut end. Cleaned and cleared.

Finished & mounted 'New' painted wheels

Well the wheels were getting a bit trashed-plus I never liked them. Silly thing to do to a jeep but had the opportunity so they are painted. I really like the wheels just not sure though how they look on jeep. Think they look better though can’t say worth the effort honestly. Partly because of color. My jeeps color, though not aluminum, isn’t a contrast like Orange or black. Has a bit of Tuxedo look about it-oh well, was on the list-done!

Back to our Jeeps home page