Painting hubcaps

When I bought my E-Pup it came with some sad looking white hubcaps and rusty wheels. I recently gave both a fresh coat of paint and added a new set of white wall tires. I really like the look of stylish alloy wheels, but I think these came out pretty nice for very little money.

These are the hubcaps as I received them. No bad, considering their age. I assume they were repainted at some point in the past 50 years:  



Here's one with new paint. The letters are hand painted by a pretty shaky hand (mine), so better at 10 foot than up close, but I don't figure most people will be getting that close anyway!  

Nice piece of work, jd!!! You brought them back to life! Most people would have probably tossed the hubcaps out but you saw their potential...Sharp!

Nothing wrong with that. They look great

Big improvement! Those turned out real nice

Your hubcaps look just like mine.



I have a friend with a vinyl cutter. I'm thinking about getting some mask cut too aid with painting the red area. Maybe just making a vinyl cutout in red and leaving it with that. Don't know how well that will hold up long term though. I'm going to look into it.

Duane

There's a lot of chrome versions of those caps floating around ebay but the nicer one's get a little spendy. ~$125 for a good set

I didn't invent the paint scheme. It apparently was a factory option for 1965-67 Econolines. Econoline.Org lists various tire and hubcap combos for the Econolines. Part number C5TZ 1130-A is the 10 1/4" diameter, white hubcaps with white letters on red.

I'm afraid to admit I used Rustoleum Enamel. I sprayed the hubcaps red first, then after a couple days of dry time, I taped off the area around the letters and sprayed the hubcaps white. After I pulled off the tape in the indented area, I hand colored in the raised letters using Rustoleum white, available in 8 ounce cans. I used a fine artist brush. I also obtained a can of the 8 oz red to touch up as needed in the red zone. After a couple days of dry time, I sprayed on a few coats of clear. I coated the back side of the caps with Rust Reformer.

In the end, they may not last forever or stand up to much abuse, but I'm happy with the result.

Here's a pick of the factory original, plucked from the web. Mine don't look all that different!:

Faded rusty white ones with faded red come up to Helluva job!

Classic!