If you have the desire to change your style by repainting your rims with scooter element paints, this is doable by anyone, with a reasonable level of difficulty, provided you have experience or our expert advice !
It is possible to do this scooter rim painting job with any gun (small, gray, expensive, cheap), or without anything, thanks to spray rim paints.
Here are the main steps and the plan to make a scooter rim painting :
1/ deglaze the original coating shine - do not sand down to the metal !
2/ in case of scratches, you can repair it with a leveling primer.
3/ spray the paints. Sometimes two different coats are needed (primer + paint).
4/ varnish. This is the last step, which is done without waiting, just after step 3.
To succeed in painting when you are not a pro in this discipline, it is especially not to fall into certain cases, which we describe below :
Successful scooter rim painting : things to avoid
Do not degrease backgrounds after sanding :
If you don't apply the paint to a perfectly sound surface, free of contaminants, then there is a high risk of surface defects appearing on the paint.
Having a non-uniform background color : If after sanding, you end up with areas of various shades, then you may have a hard time covering these differences with the paint, especially if it is a metallic or pearlescent.
Buying products from the big box store : doing this may save you money, but you're guaranteed to get a poor quality finished job with short life expectancy and mediocre resistance. Basically, there are no decent scooter rim paints available in these consumer stores and the job will have to be completely redone shortly.
When you make the movements with the spray gun or spray can and set your distance to the substrate incorrectly, you get two types of problems on the scooter rim painting that can occur :
1: orange peel and powdery surface because the spray is too far and/or too weak.
2: drips and excess because the spray is too close or too strong.
Why is it important to choose the right temperature for painting ?
We are not only talking about the air temperature, but also about the products and the parts.!
It will be easy to have a paint that stretches well and dries well, with a moderate temperature, i.e. around 20°C (this is valid for any kind of paint).
When painting with excessive heat, we can see a paint that dries too quickly (loss of gloss) or even that dries on the surface preventing the solvents from evaporating. On the contrary, below 10°C, the evaporation being very reduced, the risks of dripping are multiplied !
How to fix a drip on a scooter rim ?
With your finger, when it is still wet ? No, of course not. You'll have to wait for the paint to dry. And when you consider the thickness of a drop (1 or 2 mm), you can easily multiply the normal drying time by 3 or 4. Once dry, we can sand the top of the hardened drop, with care, until we can reduce this excess thickness. To do this, use a small piece of sanding paper type 320 and an improvised mini wedge with a flat shape, to make a wet sanding, that is to say with water.
