Wheel paint fail,happy ending.

So I bought a spare set of 17" TRD alloys from a buddy who wrote off his truck.I got a great price and saw an opportunity to have both black and stock wheels.I priced up having them professionally painted and carefully read through the abundant info on painting alloys.Being the cheap bastard that I am,and seeing the success others have had,I decided to paint them myself.I went to Wally-world and bought Dupli-color primer and wheel paint and went home to start in the garage.(Cue the mistakes).First,I elected to not sand,my excuse being that it was bitterly cold,but in reality because I was lazy.I primed all 4 and then laid down three coats of black.The finished product looked fantastic.Because the tires were off,the job was really easy and when I went to bed that night I was pretty proud of myself.The next day,after a very cold night,I went out to admire my handy-work.Certainly the odd drip was visible,but overall they looked great....until I tested their durability.The paint came off with a light scratch of the fingernail.In hindsight,I think the culprit was the cold.I know others have done them without sanding,but I think that it is impossible for the paint to cure properly with the cold and condensation.

What I decided to do was take them to a local guy who does powdercoating who claims that PC is 6 times stronger than paint.For $300 he blasted them and PC'd them.I had them mounted yesterday and was going to wait until the truck was clean to snap a couple of pics but it looks like crappy weather is on the horizon for the forseeable future.

I think you would be hard pressed to tell the difference between PC and paint at a passing glance but my hope is that they hold up really well.I rattle canned the centercaps and experimented with leaving on the silver set but I wasn't wild about the look.

 

looks good. Your problem was probably the cold as stated. Most paints will have a ideal temp range of around 55-80 degrees or so. When I did my factory steelies with my winter tires I pressure washed, dried by a propane heater in the garage until the garage was in the mid 60's, then wiped them down with mineral spirits and scuffed them, gave them a wipe to clean off the dust and then painted 3 coats of black rust stop satin paint. They turned out awesome with just this little bit of extra care.