I need some Pelican brainstorming
 

My daily driver 1986 El Camino is getting new shoes. After 320,000 miles new wheels and of course new tires.

My current wheels are great for the ease of cleanup. A quick wipe with a wash mit and they are done. I love them for that.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1376665902.jpg

This is the current wheel on the car.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1376666056.jpg

This is a one of my old snow tire wheels. These are factory OEM wheels. GM painted them. You can see the over-spray of the lighter silver on the Grey. It is obvious GM used some sort of stencil to spray the silver.

This is what is going on the car next. I have the new 15 inch "beauty rings" and the center caps from the old wheels will swap right over.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1376666570.jpg

These are right from the powder-coater. They are true and ready for paint. I want to spray the Grey parts without spending the time to mask off everything. For the paint to stick I suspect the powder coat will need to be etched and then sprayed with wheel paint with a hardener.

Now for the question. How can I reasonably make a stencil that fits the 3d shape of the wheel. It that reasonable or just a pipe dream. I was trying to avoid the time to tape off the wheels. If the consensus is jut tape them off I will do just that. There is a local wheel shop that will paint them with the proper paint.

What do you think?

A stencil won't lay flat and it will bleed. If you had a plotter you could make parts of stencils. I once had Joe Bob make me a stencil out of a type of contact paper. Or at least that is what it was supposed to be. I never used it.

Could you spray with plasti dip or whatever its called, then carefully use an exacto blade, cutting along the edge of the raised area you want silver. peel/ weed off the area you want paint and spray? Just an idea.

Why not just tape off all the area and just use a razor blade to cut away the tape where you don't want it?
Seems most of the 'lines' you want to follow are straight so it shouldn't take that long.

This makes more sense then my idea. Just mask off the silver areas overlapping and the exacto blade should be able to follow along the raised edge.

Yea, the stencil would have to have the 3D shape. I was trying to figure out some plastic I could heat and form fit it, then trim. I suspect that is way more work to paint 4 wheels than it is worth.

Yes, tape then cut. No matter which technique you choose, it will probably be time-consuming and tedious.

But I want the magic wand method!

The wheel shop want 50 bucks per wheel just to tape them up. That is my price point to do it myself.

This is the kind of DIY project at which a person can run out of steam o/a the third wheel. Then the
$50 wheel shop deal sounds better, but the results don't match.

Let the neighbor kids see you doing it and convince 'em that you're having fun.. Like Tom Sawyer whitewashing the fence...

Some things just require effort.

Sometimes the effort is less than the effort put into reducing the initial effort.

YMMV.

Glen. Call Chris with the GTO. I think Louis has his number. He does some wheel work, I bet he would help out an autocross buddy

Screw it, just get some of these.:)

http://image.sporttruck.com/f/293992...lly_wheels.jpg

Sorry, I'm a sucker for the old school rallye wheels. They look great on the El Camino.

idea of the day.

Every scenario I have come up with, ie make a stencil out of cardboard, use contact paper and an exacto knife, seems like it would take just as long as using frog tape or blue painters tape on the parts you don't want black. May take a few hours but you will get the results you desire.

Oh he11 yeah!

Ain't it great how easily we spend each others money?

I'm no wheel expert but I think the masking tape method sounds the easiest.

I thought about those and even some Craigers. But the Elky is my daily driver. It gets dirty and I wash it fequently. The stock wheels are a dream to clean.

I was gonna suggest Rally's but was afraid to since he'd already had the wheels powder coated.

I bet the Rally's would be easier to clean since they don't have as many ridges/surfaces.

If you want to make it real easy, I think they look pretty sweet in plain silver. Slam the trim rings, and centers on, and bolt em up.

Great idea! If you change your mind later, are bored, and have nothing else to do, power wash them and proceed with one of the tape ideas.