I got my Camaro a number of months ago, but I am just finally getting it into proper working order and starting to think about how it looks, which is like crap. Basically, it used to be owned by meth addicts, so it's had some weird things going on. The carb was missing one of the pull-offs, timing was way out of whack, it has three different sized lug nuts, etc... But the main concern of this post is that the right side has black wheels and the left has gold. Is there a good way to paint them so they match and don't look like crap? I seriously don't have the money to buy new ones, as I still need to get it running in top shape. Sorry about the length of the post, but maybe it amused someone?

Whoops. I guess this should go under detailing and appearance. If a mod could move it, i'd appreciate it.

Moving...

Its not that bad, go to your local parts store and buy some masking tape and pick up a newpaper if you don't have one at home. Also if you look, most parts stores have dupli color wheel paint its like 4-6 a can, not cheap but one, or at most 2 cans is all you need. Get a pack of sand paper. Take the wheels off the car, sand the color part of the wheel only, not the aluminium part unless you want to polish the aluminium. If you want to polish it then you will spend about 60 -80 bucks on polish stuff and about 3 hrs a wheel, but you can't beat the finished results. Sand the parts you want to paint, tape off what u dont, I would do 180 then 220 you may even want to do 320 before painting it. Spray the wheels and let dry some and put another coat on 2 -3 coats is all you will need the dupli color is kinda thick. Then Let dry for 1-2 hrs and pull the tape off at a sharp angle to keep from pealing up the paint.

This the result from polish and paint


Read this on how to polish the wheels.
here

Hey, thanks alot. Couldn't ask for much more precise advice.

Ok, so I've finally gotten around to prepping my wheels for painting, but I've run into another roadblock, seeing as I've never done this before. Upon closer inspection of my wheels, the black ones were originally gold, but the prior tweaker owners did a crappy job painting them, and it started to come off while I was degreasing them with Simple Green. So now my question is what is the best way to prep them? Scuff sand them down? Use aircraft remover and then sand? Also, there are a bunch of little dings on the unpainted part of the wheel, what should I do about those? Finally, are these wheels made of aluminum or steel? They're stock for an 87 Z28. I'll post pics after I get home, thanks for your time folks.

LMAO!! So if one side has gold wheels...and the other has black wheels that used to be gold...why did they paint half of em black???

More than likely Aluminium unless you have hubcaps. I would say strip them down with aircraft striper. Buy a polishing kit, and sand down the unpainted parts until you get all the little dings out with 80 git, then to 220 and then 320. Once you have them smooth polish with tripoli and then repeat with white rouge it will give you almost a mirror finish.

Then tape off the unpainted area and repaint the panted parts.

Yet cure for a few days, I would recommend a week or more before driving but atleast a couple of days so grim will not embed in the paint or dry the paint unevenly with the heating of the wheels.

Look at the sticky for polishing aluminium or do a search for more step by step instructions and where to get the products.

Tweekers sure know how to f*ck up a car!

EDIT: I live in Pierce County, WA. We lead the nation in the number of methlabs per square mile!

You may can get away with just taking the black off all the way and just have gold wheels. I used gasoline once on removing spray paint.It'll take the cheap s.p. off but will leave the gold on,especially if the clear is still good underneath the black.

Is there any reason I couldn't just strip off all the paint, factory and post factory tweaker spraypaint and then polish the aluminum underneath and end up with shiny, all aluminum rims? Has anyone done that? Any reason it wouldn't work? They're stock z28 rims, the ones that look like starfish.

Yeah, I've heard of a few people on this board that have done that (i.e. do a search). Get this stuff called aircraft stripper which should be available at most autoparts stores. Strong stuff, use caution etc... It will remove the paint and clear coat. After polishing I think you're supposed to clear coat the wheel but I've never done it, so I'm not sure.

Sure, folks have done the factory Z28 wheel before, although it is one of the more difficult wheels to do. Look for posts from 85sportcoupeto89RS, he has done a set and they look smooooth!