I bought a gallon of White rubberized roof coating from Lowe's for $23. I removed a wheel from my daily driver "HHR" and decided to paint the inside of the front tire to test the durability of the paint. I cleaned the tire with Purple Power until no brown residue was left. I painted the roof paint on the tire with a quality bristled brush. The only problem I see is that there are brush strokes in the paint. "Any Ideas" I'm going to install it back on the car and drive it for two weeks and see how it holds up. I also painted the tires on my great grandfathers old 52 Chevy to see how the long term durability would be with then sitting in the sun all day. Instantly I noticed that because I did not clean the tires, brown was bleeding through a little. Now on both sets of tires I did not care about clean edges because the HHR has the paint on the inside of the front tire so it wont be seen, and the old Chevy is just yard art right now.
For brush strokes I would try wet sanding with some real fine grit just like wet sanding a finished paint job. As for the edges I think that's going to be the hard part.
What about jacking up the car and spinning the tire by hand as you brush? Any stroke marks would be even around the face of the sidewall. Sent from my Droid using Tapatalk
You might be going too heavy with the coats. 4 or 5 light coats, don't try to cover it all in one or two coats, then it's going to be sloppy. If you stick an 80 grit sandpaper to the edge of a paint stick, you can use it to clean up the outside edges if you get any outside the lines. It's too flexible to wetsand later. Taking your time is the key to making it look nice.
Ive always used a single stage upholstery dye available thru my paint supplier. 2 medium coats, last all season.
Are the tyres new? From experience new tyres need 2-3K on them before being painted or porta-walls added as the oils in the tyres that are used for storage bleed through. Just a thought. Dan
Just don't outline them with the "happening blue stripe" that seems to be bordering everybody's flames these days... That would be like the penny in Chris Reeves' pocket in 'Somewhere In Time'... Instant disintegration of lost moments...the thin blue line...Hate the blueline.
OK after the first coat dried, it turned brown. So I applied another coat "yes thin coats" and after it dried it look better. After the previous coat dried I applied one more and it looks much better. As for the edges on the outside I'm going to spin the tire and apply a DA sander to the edge to get a clean edge and as Squablow recommended on the inside edge I will use a paint stick and 80 grit. Also these tires have about 10K on them.
I run Firestone Champion Deluxe WWW Tires. Always look good, never have to worry about them peeling, brush strokes, etc... If you want the look, buy some wide whites. Painting them on, porta walls, all of that stuff is cheap and it looks like it and it is not fooling anyone, I would rather run blackwall tires than painted whites. Just my opinion.
i did a similar expeirement on the golf cart i use at work- here's my input. without a primer(kilz) the brown always eventually bled through. i ended up priming, putting on some heavy coats-unthinned btw and letting it fully dry. i took an orbital sander with 220 grit and leveled it off, it looked as close to a store bought whitewall as i've ever seen.
If you dont want brush strokes use a foam brush, or take a 6" foam roller and cut it down to what length you need and that will apply it easier.
Thanks everyone, Ill try the sanding and even the roller on some other test tires. I would love to purchase WWW tires but considering Ive been unemployed for almost 2 years and work only 2 days a week if that, I'll stick with the traditional poor mans WWW. I know most people say if you cant do it right, don't do it, but who says this is wrong? Its just not typical.
Most people do say if you cant do it right dont do it but how do you find a new way of doin somethin then??? Im always lookin for new crazy idears to try, I think you really got somethin here!! Let me know how it looks on some more tires. I wanna try this on my 65 ford!!!
also pick up some thin tape like for makin flames, this works good for makin clean paint lines on tires, used it on a derby car but i used spray paint so it flaked off lol
For added durability you might consider applying a paint sealer (spray on) over the whitewall. It's cheap and easily applied (just point and spray).
Yep know where your coming from,being a student and only working part time. WWW are really expensive, in the UK they always have been, as not fitted to many cars of the time unlike the US. I've used porta-walls for years as a set is £40 and WWW are about £800 fitted. Thats a third of the cost of my whole car!!! Funny thing is they were used on many of the cars in the 50/60's in the UK and folks thought they had the real deal. I know they are cheap and not the real deal but if fitted right they look acceptable and easy to replace if they get damaged. I've seen a few cars that have had whites painted on, some looked okay, some looked awful. Carry on giving it a go, nothing to lose and once you get a technique sorted you may suprise yourself. If not maybe grab some porta-walls or see if you can get some WWW cheap off ebay or somewhere. As broke as i am i'm slowly saving for some, always wanted some proper ones and think wheels and tyres can make or break a car. Managed to grab a free spare set of stock rims and good tyres for my car. When i sell the car i'll keep my hard earned proper WWW and keep them for the the next car. Good luck, hope you get it sorted either way, Dan
Well my daily driver has had the WW paint on the inside now for almost K miles and still looks good, no peeling or cracks. So i went ahead and pained the tires on my 53 merc and it came out pretty decent. Cant tell that they are painted until you a few feet from them and looking right at them. And here is another cool idea that got freakin deleted from a thread i started, WW simulators. Its a trim ting similar to a beauty ring that bolts to your wheel, Just ignore the wheel itself, i guess thats why it was deleted. you can see the studs on the edge of the rim where it bolts on.
[QUOTE="T'RANTULA";6873357]If you dont want brush strokes use a foam brush, or take a 6" foam roller and cut it down to what length you need and that will apply it easier.[/QUOTE] I agree, all the new whitewall tire paints sold now on eBay come with the foam brushes. They even suggest sanding in between coats. I just bought the "latest and greatest" whitewall tire paint out there. It comes with a primer. It also says to sand or gring the whole area first, then clean several times with "Bleach White", prime (1 or 2 coats), then wait at least 24 hours before the final coats. I'm not doing a traditional size wide white though. My tires already have a 5/8" white wall. I going to paint the remaining area between the whitewall and the wheel. It will probably end up being a 2" whitewall. I also was hoping there would be less flex to the tire there and last longer.
i used white interior dye to white letter my drag slicks. pain in the but to put on. used a model car paint brush. lasted as long as the slicks did.
best results i've got: wash tire sidewall with acetone - at least 3 times best paint i've used: latex house paint primer - white put 3 thin coats on this method lasted 3 years (i sold the vehicle, so i don't know after 3 years) without peeling or turning brown - even curbed 1 tire slightly & paint did NOT come off
FOLLOWUP to my previous note. I got my paint and the instructions said to sand down the tires first before applying the primer. I was only going to do about a 1" wide strip so I tried a Dremel tool. It worked fairly great, but it quickly went down to the white underneath. So, I changed course and stripped it all off down to the white. It went quickly but I noticed it was very uneven, so I decided to use that one as my spare and moved on to a used tire to experiment on. I worked all weekend on them but, the BEST possible solution is mounting a tire on the rear of your car, (on stands) start the car and put the car in gear. Then with the wheel spinning, I used a grinder with a 60 grit pad. I left the outside edge alone and slowy worked to the center until I found the edge of the white. I then wet sanded the whitewall while still spinning on the car. With a final scrub with Bleach White and they look great. I pesonally think the paint would work great (with proper prep) because I tested it on a tire, but you have got to have an incredibly steady hand and a lot of patience, because you will need 2 coats of primer and at least 2 coats of paint. Hopefully I can post some pics soon.
POR-15 makes some paints in White that work good on rubber. I used the yellow engine enamel to paint some rubber hoses yellow once. No primer needed and it covered in one coat. Held up really well and self levels so there aren't any brush strokes.
If ya got a paint gun I recommend that ya test a small amount of the roof coat to see what will thin it. Solvent or water. Then Mask them up and spray on several thin coats. No brush marks. No sanding They will have to be clean and old enough to not bleed oils or they'll end up the color of a farm fresh egg. That crap they sell on eBay is JUNK don't waste yer $$$. Rs59
Must be something in the water. This is the third blog I read tonight where someone thought it was cool to crap in someone else's Kringle. Noxided, Go for it. Keep us posted.
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