So, with various thoughts and clever bits and pieces dispersed throughout the forum, I thought this may be a good place to share some painting tips. I decided to do my rims while I had my bike off the road in this horribly cold Melbourne winter. I considered taking apart the bearing etc, getting the tyre off and even paying someone to do it - but then I thought why go to all that trouble? nobody's gonna see the inside of the rim... So first I got a $15 can of paint stripper from bunnings, a cheap paint brush and some steel wool. Painting the stuff on, giving it a couple and all the existing paint came off like butter. Washed it down with soap & water afterwards just to ensure there was no residue. Next comes the undercoat. To prep, I let down the tyre fully and "pinched" glad wrap around the rim by gently pushing it between the tyre & rim with a paint scraper. 5 minute job! The glad wrap "wraps" around the tyre quite well and you can pull it tight to ensure you even get the edge of the rim right next to the tyre. Go light in this area though, so you don't pull chunks of paint off when you remove the glad wrap later. I ran a whiteboard marker around the hole in the middle a few times then pressed a piece of paper on it, this marked the paper and allowed me to cut a perfect circle to protect the centre of the rim. I also wrapped some masking tape around the valve. If I was going black I probably wouldn't of bothered but I want to take these rims back to the original white. Next, an even undercoat (I used an etching primer by dy mark from bunnings) and the rest will be history.
