vinyl wrapping wheels
 

So i was looking around the this site and others trying to find some information on wrapping wheels but in the end found nothing other than a few threads with no real traction....

In the end i took a leap of faith and went for it, i was never happy with the end result of plasti dip after many time using it i found within a month or two the finish became very rubbery and just wasn't the end result i wanted.

Total cost was $70 for 3M high gloss metallic vinyl wrap. i got a 60x72 inch section to make sure i had enough incase i needed to redo a wheel. I will say i'm pretty experienced with wrapping snowmobiles which came in handy but all in all it was a four hour job including time to remove the wheels from the car. We'll see how it holds up but straight off the bat the end result is what i had always been hoping to achieve with plasti dip but could just never seem to pull off.

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Excuse the finger prints

I think that looks good. I dig the progress pics

How did you cut it so perfectly? That looks pretty awesome. Also did you heat it with a heat gun or just press/roll on?

That's impressive and looks great. Good job! Wish you lived local!

Thanks I'm glad you like it! Anywhere i cut i used an exacto knife and left enough vinyl to roll around the edges of the rims for some added resistance to lift in in the future. for the outer portion of the rim i just used a credit card to tuck the vinyl around the lip of the rim. theres a decent gap between the rim and tire that makes it easy to get a nice tuck and clean edge.

i used a hair dryer as it stretched easily with just a little heat and i figured the heat gun would be overkill. stretched between each spoke until it was stretched and completely covering each one then cut out the inner triangle portion with a little extra vinyl to tuck behind each spoke.

Thanks that great to hear! toying with the idea of making it a little side job. its easy enough and I'm really pleased with the end result. Theres so many option with colors and finishes when it comes to vinyl too. could really do some one of a kind things.

I tried plastidip also and just like you said couple months it turned weird and held brake dust like no other. Started to hate it and just ripped it off. Not rich by any means and really just can't splurge on wheels so this is a great option and looks 10x better than the dip.

More power to you. Tried wrapping a pre-2013 SS wheel recently, and rage-quit after about 2 hours of trying to get it to play nice. Just can't stretch 3M's 1080 vinyl that much I suppose

Interesting i was thinking what rims would be tough to do i.e. C7 Z06 wheels, etc, etc, I'm surprised the older ss wheels gave you trouble though. could be the more aggressive drop off of the rim from the face of the rim to the inner barrel of the wheel. the extra angles of the 13 and up wheels may give an easier transition. Ironically thats the same type of vinyl i used haha.

But will it last .. One good chip can potentially slice that would open . I'd be curious to see what it looked like in a year

I'll be sure to keep updates. this has been everyone's defense for using plasti dip (not saying that's what you meant by it) its a valid question. i had to peel one wheel because i forgot to remove the center cap (or whatever its called, center circle between lug nut holes) and it gave way more resistance than peeling up dip.

Like i said i wrap snowmobiles and those get pelted with ice chunks, rocks, hit branches, all in sub zero temps and those don't peel if properly installed.

Very cool. I tried to 'dip the spokes on a set of wheels this past weekend and I had problems with it, so I pulled it all off.

I am going to try wrapping the spokes in vinyl at some point, a friend has done it.

http://youtu.be/pKuXyeAGzEU Is this the same thing?

I hoped you used Primer 94 and did a post heat. Vinyl on rims in the summer can be a disaster.