JANG|Evolution

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March '04: Gunmetal Enkei's

I very much liked the raw alloy appearance of the stock 6-spokers, but quickly realized that 1) there was no way I could keep them that bright color against the enslaught of brake dust, and 2) I wanted do start making this Evo uniquely mine, and I wanted to start with its feet. I did very realistic tests in Photoshop and narrowed my choices to gunmetal gray or bright white. I definitely preferred the look of white, but having tried such a thing years ago on a MKII Supra, I knew that this would only aggravate my brake dust woes. Gunmetal thus won out on account of logic, and it looked good, to boot, adding to the evil Evo look of the Tarmac Black devil.

Here's the process I went through with the wheels:

1. Remove 'em. I used my two jack stands on the left side, the spare at the right rear and a jack at the right front.
    
2. Clean 'em. Good ole' original Tide powdered laundry detergent cut down the surface grease & rinsed off nicely. After the rims dried (with a little help from a clean cloth), I followed up with an acetone-soaked rag to take away the annoying underbody tar that Mitsubishi seemed to have thrown in a paint gun & randomly used for touch-up in the strangest places. The acetone also helped to promote paint adhesion by chemically disrupting the smooth factory clearcoat finish (I didn't see any difference, but could feel that it turned just a bit satin).
    
3. Mask 'em. Paint on the wheels... goood. Paint on the tires? Baaaad. I tried regular masking tape on the first wheel, but found this to be cruel & unusual punishment. Masking tape doesn't like to stick to recently-dressed tires and the process took about an hour. On the remaining rims, I put to work some lessons learned in my R/C painting experience. Regular Elmer's white school glue made a perfect liquid mask which was easy to apply with a scrap 3/8" art brush, getting it down into the bead and covering the sidewalls out to the diagonally ribbed strip. I didn't need to wait for the glue to dry before adding on the Quick Mask to finish the job:
   
    
   The beauty of the white glue is that a) when dry, it doesn't adhere to rubber for crap, and most peels right off in large strips, and b) what doesn't peel off easily dissolves in water or scrapes off with a dull screwdriver. Oh, don't forget the requisite strip of masking tape around the valve stem!
    
4. Paint 'em. I used rattle-can wheel paint purchased at the local Kragen. I don't have the brand name handy to me as of this writing, but the color (one of few available) was marked "Graphite." Three coats went on the outside, separated by about 1 hour per coat. Two coats went onto the insides. I didn't bother to even mask the back sides, instead holding the can vertically inside the upright wheel, rolling the tire along as I went. It's important to also hit the outside ridge of the hub. In total, it took just under three cans to do all four rims.
    
5. Mount 'em.
    
6. Photograph 'em.