ALUMINUM RIMS CHIPPING

I have 2015 Tacoma and the paint is flaking off all four wheels. I called Toyota and they told me that it is out of warranty and basically I am screwed. This truck is just 3 years old. At this rate I won't have any wheels left at 5 years. What an embarrassment!

 

Yup, super fragile coating on the wheels. I used toyota touch up paint on mine. Toyota has had some notoriously bad alloy wheel coatings. My wifes 2008 rav4, basically all the coating on the sport rims have flaked off. Embarrassing for toyota.

 

Same thing on my '06 but only 2 of the 4 rims, other 2 are perfect... strange

 

My 2006 16" aluminum alloy wheels are mess with the paint bubbling and flaking off.

 

What is everyone's thought on removing the finish and just polishing it back to a shine?

I still have some polish compound from when I had to polish my mosin nagant bolt.

 

Sounds like a perfect reason to pick up some SCS wheels.

On a side note we now know what the paint looks like at the atomic level.

 

If your going to strip them, and you plan on keeping them, why not get them powdercoated?

That way, you'll have a much stronger finish in whatever color/finish you want

 

That’s terrible, I sure hope that doesn’t happen to my 2015. Do you have any idea how they got chipped or did the paint just start coming off.

 

Oh that sounds nice. Any idea what that runs? Or is this something people generally do themselves?

 

It all depends...

If your up for stripping them (I wouldn't want to), that would save you some dough.

The powdercoating itself requires a really big oven, so most wouldn't be able to do that part themselves (unless you own a powdercoating shop).

I bought a set of Tundra wheels off of Craigslist, that had a good amount of paint chipping, and had those powdercoated about 3 years ago. It cost me somewhere between $300-400. That included the guy stripping the old paint off (which is most of the labor cost), and the cost of the powdercoat, and remaining labor.

 

Man that sucks. Sad that the truck is great, but issues with the frame and wheels and little things just seems to distract from the truck itself.

 

I would try aircraft stripper if you hadn’t already thought of that, it should remove the powdercoat easily.

 

Well I am just wondering how well the bare aluminum would polish. I've polished steel, but not aluminium.

 

It would probably corrode (ozidize?) pretty quickly if you don’t clearcoat it. I think it would look good polished though.

 

I sandblasted mine and painted them with Duplicolor high performance wheel paint. Two years later they look fine, with no damage except from rocks. It is a very durable product, easy to apply, with the added advantage that it can be touched up. Powdercoat is good, and does last, but once scratched cannot be touched up. Blasting cost me about $90, and the paint and primer was maybe $30 more.
The factory coating, whatever it is, is junk.

 

Where did you have yours done? A local shop?

 

You could touch it up if you get a matching paint. Knock on wood, I don't have a single chip in any of mine.

You did remind me of a downside though:

You can't powder coat the center caps (because they're plastic). So you would have to get matching paint for those.

 

A local shop did the blasting, and I did the paint myself. Super easy

 

I don't think I've ever seen a sport alloy that wasn't flaked and corroded