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Wheel painting

Richard Moore asks..

>I recently purshased a 86 535i  and just found out that the wheels are painted.
>I read the archive file on painting wheels but think that its a waste of time
>considering that it would come off anyway.

Huh? What would come off??

>Well I did notice that the color under the wheel is white? Is this the aluminum
>and will it hurt the wheels if I strip the rest of the paint...because buying
>new rims seems a bit on the expensive side..

No - this is a primer that was put on the aluminum to help bond the paint.
I would NOT recommend taking them down to bare metal.

>I want to know if anyone else has done this and what are the positives and
>negatives.  I understand appearance may suffer, but since my car is a dark colo
>r anyway that contrast might actually help...

What I did on BOHICA - is took the wheels off, and used an agressive cleaner
to remove ALL the brake dust, combined with a Scotch-Brite(tm) pad. This got
all the dust buildup off - and some of the surface paint.

I then repainted with Wurth Silver Wheel paint, and overcoated them with
Wurth Clear. (Both of these are available at a good price from Noble in
Roundel). This is the same paint BMW uses - and the appearance if done
carefully is exactly like BRAND NEW.

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Don Eilenberger ([email protected]
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 '79 R65 FrankenCycle     - der Beemer
 '87 535i BOHICA          - der Bimmer
 '75 Hunter 25 WindBreaker  - das Boot
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DOD#1177, BMW-CCA#104316, BMW-MOA#64000
NJS-BMW-R#0001 (I'm a glutton for clubs)
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  "Only difference between a man and
   a boy is the price of the toys!"
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    Located in lovely New Jesey!
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