Powder coat is an amazing solution for refinishing your rims.  Getting a fresh coat of powder paint restores them to brilliance and can customize your vehicle’s look.  Not only are they guaranteed to last you several years but powder coat comes in a dazzling range of colours and finishes, it’s hard not to please you.  But there are steps to take in order to get the best price, quality and service.

How Powder Coat Works

Products for powder coat need to be stripped completely of their original paint and any other miscellaneous attachments that can be destroyed in the process, or cannot be removed later.  The coating will adhere any bolts making it impossible to remove unless the part is stripped of its paint again.  The part is either chemically stripped or sandblasted to remove its original paint.  The part is then washed to remove any excess grease or debris.  Any masking or plugging is then done at this time to ensure proper fitment of pieces that bolt together.  The part is sprayed with powder using a special gun and then inserted into an oven where it melts the powder and cures it to harden the surface.  The final product is a coating that is very durable, weatherproof and beautiful.

What you Need to Know when Choosing an Applicator

There are many companies out there that offer powder coating but there is a clear difference between those who service the manufacturing sector versus a custom shop.  A manufacturing plant normally uses a conveyor system to move products through a washing station and into an oven.  Employees are stationed at different parts of the conveyor, some loading the hooks with your rims and other unloading them.  Because they are placed in a lineup of hundreds, sometimes thousands of items, it may be overlooked.  At a shop like ours where we only do small runs, we use a batch oven.  We only load one set of rims into our oven at a time meaning quality control is higher.  The same people prepping and loading your rims into the oven and the same ones who take them out for inspection.

Depending on your needs, if you do not have a large number of pieces it’s best to go with a custom shop where they do not have minimum order amounts.  A custom shop will also be able to accommodate your colour requests as many large scale powder coating operations only carry a limited array of colours because their customers bring thousands of pieces at a time.  At Rice Rocket the applicators are the same people at the service counter answering your questions.

Another thing to note is that many shops offer the service however they don’t do it in house; it is very commonly subcontracted to larger companies.  Because of this, you can expect to be paying a marked up price, and worse of all have to wait a long time for your parts to be done.  When it exchanges more than one set of hands, you can expect the turnaround time to be higher.  Even more inconvenient is the quality.  If there is something wrong with the finished product, you can expect the vendor probably won’t be able to fix it quickly or be happy to offer the adjustment due to their constraints.  They cannot control the outcome because they are not doing the job themselves.  Simply as us about our facilities and equipment, we powder coat in-house using professional equipment for the very best possible product.

Powder Coating Rims: How it Works

Rims are the most commonly refinished item on a vehicle, no matter if it’s a car, motorcycle, truck, ATV, you name it we’ve done it.  Simply changing the colour of your rims can alter the look of your vehicle dramatically, making it appear more luxurious, modern and stylish.  Current trends have determined chrome is out, gloss black is in.  That’s our most popular request and for good reason.

Here is how the process works:

1) When you drop off your rims and choose your colour and finish, we remove the tires, sensors and valves in-house on our tire machines.

2) We then either sandblast or chemically strip the rims down to raw metal.

3)  Any curb rash is no problem.  We sand down the face, eliminating any minor curb rash for free.  If needed we have an aluminum welder in house where we resurface the damage.

4) The rims are washed to remove any grease or debris.

5) We mask the back of the face, where the rim sits on the hub and plug any tapered holes for proper fitment.

6) The rims are sprayed and cured in our gas-fired batch oven.  This process does not damage the metal in any way because it is cured at a low temperature.

7) Once the wheels are cooled down, we like to wait 24 hours before tires are mounted.  This is because in the past we find any liquids used in the tire mounting process may stain fresh coats of powder.

8) We snap some beautiful photos for our gallery and social media, and then you are called for pickup!

9)  You send us pictures of them on your vehicle and that makes us very happy.

Powder coated rims are a great, long-lasting and inexpensive way to stylize your vehicle. Custom shops like us attract car enthusiasts due to the simple fact that we do this all day, every day, so we better be good at it.  Rice Rocket is a proud applicator of Prismatic Powders products serving Canada’s Greater Toronto Area.