@pirahnah3 was nice enough to let us do some work on his new Challenger after the clinic we hosted. So while the car is in, one request was that we ceramic coat his wheels. In the past, I’ve mentioned that we spray our wheel coatings as opposed to hand application. A few people were curious about how we do it...so here it is finally!
The first things I’ll get into are the reasons why we spray our wheel coatings versus hand application. By spraying a coating, we are able to get a more complete coverage and apply our coatings quicker. This comes at a trade off of more material used. For us where our time in a job matters, it’s a simple decision.
First, here’s the wheels on the car. We have the luxury of a lift so we can pull all four wheels at once.
Once the wheels are off, we spray them down with wheel cleaner. We still use the old bottle that we’ve filled a million times. It’s the new formula in it though.
Once they’re rinsed and cleaned to our satisfaction, we spray them with Tire & Rubber Cleaner and scrub with the tire brush.
Once this process is done, we actually steam clean the wheels and calipers to get everything from all the little sticky spots.
The supplies to do the job...gloves, a mask, an airbrush, coating, a suede towel and a microfiber towel. I can’t stress the importance of gloves and a mask enough. You’re aerosolizing a liquid that turns to crystal form. Don’t take chances inhaling it.
We use a Harbor Freight airbrush. It’s $10
and if we trash one, we don’t care really. We always clean it out with paint thinner when we are done.
Load up your bottle with some ceramic coating, test to make sure you’re happy with the spray pattern and you’re ready to go.
Spray evenly. If you spray a little heavy it’s not a big deal since you’ll buff off later. Let the coating cure for the required time based on the coating used and then buff it off with the suede towel.
The suede will remove the majority of the coating. Give it a final buff with the microfiber towel.
Repeat the process for the barrels of the wheel. Make sure you didn’t overspray to the front. So give a final buff with both towels one more time and let the wheels cure for a bit before reinstalling.
Next we steamed the calipers and cleaned them with Eco APC.
Once they were cleaned up to our satisfaction, we reloaded our airbrush and sprayed the calipers. Overspray isn’t a big issue.
Buff it off with the suede and follow with the microfiber.
Allow the wheels to cure. And then mount them up and apply tire dressing of your choice.
Toss your suede in the garbage and wash your microfiber immediately (the ceramic it picks up is negligible if you buff correctly).
You can use this technique with trim coating and grills if you’re careful in doing so and spray evenly. Runs are harder to take care of in a grill.
Question
shane@detailedreflections
@pirahnah3 was nice enough to let us do some work on his new Challenger after the clinic we hosted. So while the car is in, one request was that we ceramic coat his wheels. In the past, I’ve mentioned that we spray our wheel coatings as opposed to hand application. A few people were curious about how we do it...so here it is finally!
The first things I’ll get into are the reasons why we spray our wheel coatings versus hand application. By spraying a coating, we are able to get a more complete coverage and apply our coatings quicker. This comes at a trade off of more material used. For us where our time in a job matters, it’s a simple decision.
First, here’s the wheels on the car. We have the luxury of a lift so we can pull all four wheels at once.
Once the wheels are off, we spray them down with wheel cleaner. We still use the old bottle that we’ve filled a million times. It’s the new formula in it though.
Once they’re rinsed and cleaned to our satisfaction, we spray them with Tire & Rubber Cleaner and scrub with the tire brush.
Once this process is done, we actually steam clean the wheels and calipers to get everything from all the little sticky spots.
The supplies to do the job...gloves, a mask, an airbrush, coating, a suede towel and a microfiber towel. I can’t stress the importance of gloves and a mask enough. You’re aerosolizing a liquid that turns to crystal form. Don’t take chances inhaling it.
We use a Harbor Freight airbrush. It’s $10
and if we trash one, we don’t care really. We always clean it out with paint thinner when we are done.
Load up your bottle with some ceramic coating, test to make sure you’re happy with the spray pattern and you’re ready to go.
Spray evenly. If you spray a little heavy it’s not a big deal since you’ll buff off later. Let the coating cure for the required time based on the coating used and then buff it off with the suede towel.
The suede will remove the majority of the coating. Give it a final buff with the microfiber towel.
Repeat the process for the barrels of the wheel. Make sure you didn’t overspray to the front. So give a final buff with both towels one more time and let the wheels cure for a bit before reinstalling.
Next we steamed the calipers and cleaned them with Eco APC.
Once they were cleaned up to our satisfaction, we reloaded our airbrush and sprayed the calipers. Overspray isn’t a big issue.
Buff it off with the suede and follow with the microfiber.
Allow the wheels to cure. And then mount them up and apply tire dressing of your choice.
Toss your suede in the garbage and wash your microfiber immediately (the ceramic it picks up is negligible if you buff correctly).
You can use this technique with trim coating and grills if you’re careful in doing so and spray evenly. Runs are harder to take care of in a grill.
Thanks for reading!
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