A while ago, I painted my own Stilo's wheels in PPG's Shadow Chrome - a lengthy and expensive process... about $450 in materials and days of work. I wasn't all that happy when people called the wheels "shiny black" - especially as about 15 coats of silver went on them!

So today, earning some much-needed money by painting two sets of wheels for someone else, I cut a few corners. I agreed to have the wheels sandblasted, which got all the previous coatings off. I decided to apply filler directly to the bare alloy to repair the gouges, sanded, removed balance weights and adhesive, and after only about three hours of preparation, wheels were ready for paint...

One lesson learned before; don't try to remove the FIAT badges from the centre caps - they are brittle, glued-in (so, will shatter), and they are a different size to any FIAT badge that I could find.

Narrow masking tape (3mm wide) curves nicely around the badges - wide masking tape (of course) being useful for the centre. I label the centre caps and wheels carefully so they won't be mixed up later.

To start the paint stages, I just used a single-pack low-cost grey etch primer (Wattyl Super Etch), which was dry enough to overcoat in less than an hour.

Out came the Very Coarse Metallic basecoat (no tint added) - might as well have got out a glitter cannon! - very sparkly. The roughness of the sandblasted surface, plus the un-thinned etch primer, made the metallic flecks stand out more than usual.

Three thick coats of clearcoat left the wheels reasonably smooth and shiny - hopefully they will be easy to clean. I think the first layers of clear also redistributed the metallic flecks.

Total time about six hours - so most of my working day, but good to have achieved something tangible on a Friday!

I managed to keep the materials cost down to $148 per set of wheels (a useful saving on $450 for Shadow Chrome).

-Alex

Here are my own wheels - for comparison - I wonder whether to redo them in the sparkly silver - what do you think?

-Alex

BTW... The other set of wheels were these, which I painted on Thursday, going onto an Alfa Romeo 156. The process was exactly the same as for the Stilo wheels - they were given to me in a sandblasted condition, but there were still gouges to repair.

I used to have a set of these in perfect original condition on my own 156 - I still think they are my very-favourite wheel design. Maybe in the future I should buy some and put them on my Spider, but the 17" Teledials it has are considered more rare and desirable - can't say I'm a fan of those

-Alex