The summer after my bought my 1990 Ford F-250, I decided to freshen up the looks a bit by painting the bumpers, fender trim, and emblems. It made a big difference in how the truck looked. The one thing I didn’t get around to painting was the wheel.

While the wheels didn’t look horrible, the old paint was flaking off in some places and didn’t look very fresh. The right front was also covered in light rust because of the formerly metal-on-metal brakes.

I started off by cleaning the wheels. After using a wire wheel on my drill to remove the loosest paint, I went over it with some sandpaper. Because I don’t care that much about making anything on this truck perfect, I wasn’t concerned about any little bits of rust that may have been left. Also these look like they used to be chrome, which paint doesn’t stick very well to, as my front bumper and mirrors will show you.

It took a while, but I masked off the tires with pieces of paper and masking tape. A common tip I see for masking off tires is to use index cards or playing cards and sticking them between the tire and wheel, but I didn’t have enough of a lip to stick anything in, so I had to do it this way.

A couple of coats of black spray paint and the wheels look sharp.

It may not be the most noticeable change, but to me these wheels look so good now. I love black wheels and freshly painted looks great. If this was a vehicle I cared about looking good for a long time I would’ve spent more time with the sanding and cleaning, but for this rusty hunk of metal these should work just fine.

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-Dan