Has anyone used plastidip and how is the durability? rock chips, the elements , etc... Getting bored of the color of my DD wheels. May spring for a change. Thanks.
It has held up great on my lip and side skirts. I don't know how that finish looks on wheels although there are people who have done it.
Just thought I would ask here. I know its all over the bmw, pontiac, VW forums with folks doing this. I was concerned with balancing on the wheels. I figured It may be worth doing to see if how the wheels would look powder coated.
Unless you are taking the tires off to do it...I don't think you'll have to worry about balancing. The machine that balances wheels might screw up the coating if you are going to have to mount and balance afterwards though...
The wheels on my old M3 were plastidipped. Took an entire winter like a champ. They will turn a little brownish after about 8 months though. But here's the cool thing....when I was tired of it.....a power washer and some time peeled it right off. You don't need to sand the wheels...just clean them really really well here's a pic
To peal it off? I dunno but to peel it off it wasn't too bad...just time consuming. Forget doing it with your fingers if you have a lot of nooks, crannies, and rivets like mine did. Pressure washer took it all right off but took a good 2-3 hours worth of spraying with a turbo jet nozzle. however I did sand my wheels down because they had chipped paint on them prior so the PlastiDip had more to grab on to.
i found this thread today on nasioc http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2249876 did their whole car lmao, and apparently it PEALS off very easily
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3) I wouldn't touch that stuff with a 6 foot pole again, personally.
The guy's asking about what will happen to his car and if there's anyway to "fix" it after he's already gone and plasti-dipped his car... What a smart guy.
I have an ongoing Plastidip experiment on my Forester: It's a 4-coat Plastidipped license plate frame that I use to monitor color, fading, flaking. It's been over a year, and granted there's no rock chips back there, the color is still perfect and it hasn't flaked at all. One thing to note is that Plastidip does not respond well to being masked off. The material sprayed on to the desired object (wheel, etc) connects to the material sprayed on the masking tape, and when it comes time to remove the tape, the Plastidip on the desired object tends to rip and pull off around the edges. You can avoid this by cutting the edges by the tape with a razor blade before you take the tape off, or removing the tape before the Plastidip dries (however this is useless in a multi-coat application).
I did the front fenders and hood on my car, I'm planning to do the rest just haven't had time yet. So far its held up very well. I will warn you though it takes a lot. It also takes a long time to get it to cover evenly. Start out with light coats but work your way heavier with each coat. That way it doesn't look like tiger stripes. Matt
Black, I actually wanted to do white but I couldn't find it locally. Ill try to remember to snap some pictures tomorrow. If I have any free time at all this week then Ill try and finish it. Matt
i plastidipped my center console,ac rings, a/b/c pillars, map light cover, dome light cover. and its all held fine. i did the center console and the rings over 3 years ago and they're still holding up fine.
Sorry this week is kind of crazy. I doubt Ill have time to take pics or post it till after Thursday. I'm thinking about peeling the hood off just to see how easy it is to remove.
I am in process of using plastidip on my wheels as well, and whole car down the road. $6 bucks a can, 2 cans max, and it peels off...Can't go wrong. Plastidip is like condom for cars.
How well does the plastidip adhere to straight aluminum or steel? I've got a few bikes that need repaint.
It adheres well but applies super thin so take a lot of coats. It looks like water at first. You can't rush it.