Refinished 16" OEM Ranger 4x4 wheels on my '94 2wd

veefer800canuck · Apr 4, 2008

Bought these wheels off a guy who lives near me for $50 apiece.

Stripped and buffed them down to remove the corrosion, then painted the insides of the spokes black, then cleared over the wheels.

They are 16x7 factory 4x4 wheels off a '99 Ranger. Tires are 225/60-16 front and 235/60-16 rear.

Wheels fit great, they are inset about 1 cm as compared to the 14" originals. Nothing rubs or hits.

Still got more work to do to the truck, will post up when something changes.

veefer800canuck · Apr 4, 2008

Oh, and the reason I chose the sizes I did was to keep the O.D. of the tires almost stock so as not to throw off my gearing/speedo and brake bias.

The fronts are 0.9% taller and the rears are 2.7% taller than the stock 225/70-14s.

Front to rear difference with the 4 new tires on is only 1.8% with the rears being 1/2" taller.

So at 100km/hr, I'm actually doing 102.7 which is not a big deal at all.

or 60 = 61.6 for you non-metric types.

177CIOfPureLove · Apr 4, 2008

Wow man, nice work! I really like how they came out. The black really accents the truck very nicely. How did you strip the clear off? i would love to do the same to mine. Very nicely done.

veefer800canuck · Apr 4, 2008

177CIOfPureLove said:
Wow man, nice work! I really like how they came out. The black really accents the truck very nicely. How did you strip the clear off? i would love to do the same to mine. Very nicely done.

Thanks. The holes in the wheels were painted silver from the factory with clearcoat over top. That was the hardest part to get cleaned off.

I used about 4 cans of aerosol aircraft stripper to remove the clearcoat. Got it from NAPA.

Then, I used a fine 3M disc in my Makita 1/2" drill to remove the corrosion and buff the wheels to a "brushed" finish.

The paint I used was Dupli-colour wheel paint, flat black for the holes, but when you clear over it, it of course becomes glossy.

http://www.duplicolor.com/products/wheel.html

The clear is kinda tricky, I had a couple of runs in the first rim, luckily on the backside, but I got better very quickly after that!

I guess I forgot to get a closeup pic of one of the wheels, I'll try and do that tomorrow.

compleckz · Apr 5, 2008

nice work, looks great

veefer800canuck · Apr 5, 2008

veefer800canuck said:
I guess I forgot to get a closeup pic of one of the wheels, I'll try and do that tomorrow.

Here ya go, it was snowing, so that's why there's some junk in the pic, and that's not runs in the clearcoat at 6 O'clock, it's water:

Ruffinit · Apr 7, 2008

Nice work. I am looking at maybe doing the same to some of the factory BII/Ranger wheels, but remembered a friend of mine that had a difficult time of getting the clearcoat off which kept me from doing it. When you say a "fine" 3M disk, are you speaking of the disk with the "Scotchbrite" type material?

veefer800canuck · Apr 7, 2008

Ruffinit said:
Nice work. I am looking at maybe doing the same to some of the factory BII/Ranger wheels, but remembered a friend of mine that had a difficult time of getting the clearcoat off which kept me from doing it. When you say a "fine" 3M disk, are you speaking of the disk with the "Scotchbrite" type material?

Yes, that's basically it. Looks like this:

The ones I used were "disposables" with a built-in arbor and no backing pad. Wear 'em out and chuck 'em. About 7 bucks each. One did all 4 wheels, but it was just about toast at the end.

But first, I removed the clearcoat with aerosol aircraft stripper.

kunar · Apr 7, 2008

looks damn good. i want to refinish a set of wheels for my truck before i get new tires...

Jspafford · Apr 7, 2008

I was thinking the same thing. I wouldn't mind doing that to both the B2 wheels and the Ranger's.

Only problem is, the body on the B2 is going to heck fast, it would look funny with nice wheels and a crappy body.

davidbeau · Apr 10, 2008

I love the color dude. It looks great on your truck.

________________________________________
See my Mazda Blog

philS · Apr 10, 2008

"it would look funny with nice wheels and a crappy body"

That aptly describes half of the cars in New England.

veefer800canuck · May 9, 2012

Update: the black paint has chipped quite a bit from rocks, etc. :sad:

If I ever did this again on any vehicle, I'd spring the $$$ for powdercoating instead of the wheel paint in a rattle can.

I'm still running the same wheels, but swapped the 235/60-16s from the back onto the front, and put some 255/55-16s in the back instead.

Looks great with the staggered tire sizes. The fronts are 2.7% larger diameter than stock and the rears are 2.4% larger. Not enough for the speedo to be too whacked out, and it doesn't hurt the power very much either. With only 145 HP back in 1994, some of those horses have escaped the corral since then, I didn't want to raise the gearing too much.

GPS verifies it to be about 3% as far as I can eyeball while running at highways speeds.

Ranger Sport Honduras · Jul 15, 2012

Looks really nice! I always liked those rims, and with street tires they look really cool.

veefer800canuck · Feb 7, 2013

dusty thread alert!

i got bored of the factory explorer/ranger wheels, so i picked up a set of mustang cobra wheels, 16x8

just waiting on some 5mm spacers for the front, so the center caps dont hit on the hub grease caps. got some ET style lug nuts coming also to make up for the spacers.

will post up when i get the rims mounted, but honestly it probably wont be until early april when the snow is permanently gone.

Refinished 16" OEM Ranger 4x4 wheels on my '94 2wd

New Member

New Member

New Member

New Member

New Member

New Member

Member

New Member

Forum Staff Member

Logan Andrew Feb 17, 2012

New Member

New Member

New Member

Zoom Zoom

New Member

Sponsored Ad

Sponsored Ad

Member & Vendor Upgrades

Truck of The Month

Recently Featured

Follow TRS On Instagram

TRS Events

25th Anniversary Sponsors

Check Out The TRS Store

Sponsored Ad

Sponsored Ad

Sponsored Ad

Amazon Deals