This might be a dumb question, but im curious.. does powder coating only work on metal? or could you powder coat any material.. like say an entire car, as an alternative to painting. Just seems like its so much more durable and cheaper than liquid paint.. so why not?

 

I think they do it inside of a furnace or something.

So you would have to strip the entire car down to the bare metal and find a powder coating place with a big enough oven to fit the whole car insie.

 

Um, you have to bake a powder coated object at very high heat, plastics/fiberglass shouldn't be powder coated because it'll melt. You can powder coat your car sure, but it's not worth stripping it down and all the labor involved.

 

It does go into an oven so it has to be able to survive 300ish degree tempuratures. You also have to be able to charge the material for the powder to stick (the part is positively charged, the powder is negatively charged and that makes it stick until it's placed in the oven and permantly baked on.

 

On the subject of... about how much would it cost to powder coat a set (4) of steelies or some other rims?

Sure it's going to vary who I go to... but ballpark. $50? $500?

 

I got my stock rims powder coated (because believe it or not my honda stock rims looked really sweet on my car already.) For steelies I don't know, but anything in the 100-200 dollar range is decent, and 300 is the highest you could expect to find. As for the other rims, if they are already powder coated (stock rims usually are, or at least they have an aluminum finish of some sort on them initially) then it'll cost extra to have that taken off. Removing the stock powder coat/finish/whatever can cost about 100-200 bucks, again, ontop of whatever it'd be to powder coat them another color. The reason for the price on removing the coating on your rims is because you can't just sand-blast it off w/o ruining the metal. They need to use some chemical compounds etc. and then do some blasting. It can be pricey but honestly it's the best way to go imo for rims you want colored. The black on my rims almost perfectly matches the black on my car and it comes out so much better than spray paint etc.

 

so $300 tops for 4 wheels to get powder coated? or per rim?(I hope you mean for all 4 rims)

on one of my rims the clear coat came off on a small section, how much do you think a rim repair shop would charge me to re finish all my rims? there are no scratches on the rims.

 

The guy I work for charges about $40 a rim to coat and bake. I think that includes any cleanup before hand as well (sand blasting, taping the inner hub and whatnot). We're just a small little local place though, I don't know what a big national place would charge. They come out looking great but if it's just steel wheels for the winter, a $2 wire brush and $10 in flat black spraypaint is all you need

 

thanks for the info, I'm thinking about having my rims refinished this winter when the winter rims are being beat on.
do you think they would look fine the way they are, or maybe gunmetal?

 

You can get plastic pieces anodized instead of powdercoated.