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So I picked up this Audi using a website called Beepi. It's a 2013 with only 9,900 miles! Total garage queen.
For winter I bought a set of basically new Nokian Hakkapeliitta R2 tires that someone had wrapped around some Audi Q5 wheels from Craigslist.
Fresh from Craigslist after a bath.
Given the amount of brake dust I seem to be generating, I decided to plastidip them, hoping to have a nice black on black look for winter, and hopefully spend less time cleaning wheels. But I decided to repair the curb rash first.
Rash
Bondo/Spot puttied
Sanded and ready for paint.
Then I spent most evenings for a week painting. Three coats back and four coats front on each wheel. I'm really happy with the results. I also dipped the center caps, but I removed the Audi logo and lug toppers first, to keep a classy hint of chrome.
Centercaps before and after.
Tape up the center to make sure you don't have any issues bolting them up. I used index cards to present overspray and it worked well, just had to be careful on the first couple passes so the rattle can didn't blow out the cards.
Final wet coat on the backs.
Same prep for the front, hard to tell but I put some spacer under with to keep them off the ground. Also doing the backs first prevents overspray on the fronts.
What the first coat looks like, should be light to start, I waited 25min between coats, which was just about right.
Final wheel, I did the one without curb rash first, to make sure I liked the look before spending time on the others.
Then just had to mount them up. I'm really happy with the final look!
You really can't tell they ever had curb rash. Just need to wash the dust off the tires.
not to my taste, but nice job nonetheless!
personally, I would have kept them silver, or maybe gone to a gunmetal grey - and to avoid the brake dust, switch the pads to akebono ceramics... then you won't get the squealing brake pads in cold weather. my car has less than 10,000 miles on it and squeals like a b***h in the cold weather. I will be changing brake pads in the near future.
11-20-2016, 09:42 AM
Got my winter setup sorted.
