SlowTeg

This topic ->

It's been covered many times and in different forums. If you don't track/care about the strength of your wheels, go ahead and powdercoat. If you don't want to mess with the integrity of the wheel, paint. If you want the paint job to be professional, then pay a professional to paint it.

I didn't think temp mattered when it came to sandblasting.. you blast sand at it..

/thread

Voodoo_S2K

Yes, because people keep on stating that powder coating is going to affect the integrity of the wheels, which is an unproven fact.

I recently took my roll bar to get powder coated to the same shop I've refer people to for the last 10 years. I was asking him about the whole wheel/powder coating thing and he stated that he does powder coating for several onroad and offroad race teams and they have never suffered a crack wheel that could in any way be attributed to weakened integrity as a result of powder coating.

I do know that this shop uses media blasting to prep wheels, so maybe those shops that use chemical stripping might be altering the structure of the wheel and that is what accounts for the few cracked wheels?

jamesrdoe

Yeah I think the powdercoating myth is bs. Technically yeah you could bake them too long and too hot but most reputable powder coaters do wheels ALL the time. The S2000 image circulating around is a powder coated Ap2V1 that is all wrecked. Many things could have caused that including incorrect lug nut torquing. One report of it happening and all of a sudden it's "proven". There are a couple other images floating around from other cars but without testing you can't say whether the wheel would have or wouldn't have done that powder coated or not.

You could do plastidip. I did it and it's dead simple. Don't even bother masking the tires just put some tire shine on them first. Take the wheel off, spray it and voila. Just make sure you do a can per wheel. It's also really strong against rock chips and much easier to spray than regular paint. I'm going to powder coat next season though because cleaning the brake dust off the front wheels is a bit annoying. Either than or I could throw on some clear coat but I want to match some vinyl up to the wheel colour anyway.

You can check my post here.
https://www.s2ki.com/s2000/topic/890...t__p__22752633

I masked in those pics but I did some Nissan Titan rims after and saved myself a lot of hassle by not masking.
https://i.imgur.com/vJK9WPz.jpg

ZDan

It's no myth that overexposing heat treated aluminum wheels to elevated temperatures will *significantly* weaken them. 350F for 10 minutes won't hurt them, though. It's all a question of whether processes that are compatible with aluminum are followed. There have been valid stories of wheels that were exposed to ridiculous temperatures in the cleaning process, with failures resulting. I have also heard of chemical processes that can damage wheels. And of course if the coating is done at elevated temperatures (beyond ~350F) for extended time periods, significant weakening does occur.

Any GOOD powder-coater will know what's appropriate for aluminum wheels, or he just won't do them. But you should make absolutely certain beforehand!