Wheel painting failure

[Squiggy]

This was my first attempt painting any car wheel so I watched a bunch of videos, read a bunch of forum posts, and took my sweet time to see if I could get it just right first try. But, such are the plans of mice and men. I have no idea what went wrong. Someone said low humidity but I have doubts. Rattle canned a lot of stuff and never ran into this. Someone else said 'maybe you sprayed too far away' but I was at 10" to 15". The primer has an expiration stamp of 02-27-2017 on the bottom, and the silver says 09-19-2016. Maybe the paint was too old? But, again, never ran into a problem with too old rattle can paint not working. Bummed.


The process...

> cleaned wheel with warm soapy water
> cleaned hard caked brake dust with brake cleaner and wire brushes
> sanded with 150 grit
> sanded with 400 grit
> sanded with 800 grit
> sanded with 2000 grit
> blew off dust with air compressor
> wiped thoroughly with alcohol and let dry over night
> masked
> shook rattle can of Wurth Self-Etching Primer by hand and with Sawzall
> sprayed light coat of Primer. let dry 10 min
> sprayed 2nd light coat of primer. let dry 10 min
> sprayed 3rd coat of primer. let dry 30 min. then checked to see if it needed sanding. seemed ok so did not sand
> shook rattle can of Wurth Silver Wheel Paint by hand and with Sawzall
> sprayed light coat of silver. something did not seem right. paint dark grey with spatters of silver. let dry 10 min
> sprayed 2nd coat of silver. still dark grey with silver specks. let dry
> rubbing hand along paint results in a pile of DUST!!


prepped




primer applied. did not go on very wet but seemed ok




'silver' applied




dust!!

[srmmmm]

I encountered this with silver paint I used to touch up some dock rash on our PWC. Same exact process of prep with sanding, cleaning, primer, sanding, primer, sanding, cleaning and paint. I also had clumps of pigment coming out which did not adhere to the primer and rapidly clogged the spray nozzle. I reported the result to the company that supplied the kit (Colorrite) and they said it was old paint. To their credit they sent me replacement primer, wet/dry sandpaper and paint at no cost and everything worked fine on the next attempt.


2002 X5 3.0 346,500 miles
2014 428i 39,500 miles


2004 325i sold at 123,600 miles
2001 325i sold at 66,000 miles


1970 Firebird Under restoration - paint shop this month

[oldskewel]

Wow. Sad to see. You seem to have done everything better than perfect, then got nailed at the end. I guess the lesson is to separately test the paint on something else before spraying in on the wheel.

Do you agree that everything was good except for the bad paint?

And thanks for the detailed steps - I'll try that sawzall trick to shake the can next time I need to spray something. Never heard of that one, and I'll take any chance I can get to use power tools.

[smokeyyank]

Bad paint.

With the prep you did it should not have that bad of an adhesion issue.

[oldskewel]

And BTW, awesome to see you're doing that in your kitchen. You're single, right?

[PropellerHead]

Originally Posted by oldskewel

And BTW, awesome to see you're doing that in your kitchen. You're single, right?

[jsoto]

Originally Posted by PropellerHead

LOL And the cherry ontop is the overspray......
Depends how good your eyes are on picking it up, but that rattle can atomizes and send off baby paint at least 7-10 feet out...

Gotta give credit though. At least it's not overspray outdoors possibly contaminating any nearby cars

[Squiggy]

Thanks everyone. A gearhead friend just got back to me and said that, yeah, he has seen this happen with old paint and that my prep wasn't the problem. What annoys me is the online seller sold me paint that had already been expired a year. I didn't think to worry about it because the seller has sent me only good stuff before. Guess I will be checking dates from now on. @oldskewel... lol. i'm single but only did the sanding and masking in the kitchen (still a mess tho)

well back to sanding. gotta love driving on the spare jumped my cool factor from -5 to about -8

[fishhouse4]

Originally Posted by oldskewel

And BTW, awesome to see you're doing that in your kitchen. You're single, right?

You win the internet for today.

[andrewwynn]

Originally Posted by oldskewel

And BTW, awesome to see you're doing that in your kitchen. You're single, right?

I do plenty of car work in my kitchen but it's most definitely not "wife approved".

When her car works properly afterwards I get forgiven but there is often hell to pay in the during phase.

Love the model rim btw that was my second favorite choice of 300 choices.