Do NOT paint the letters yellow

speedfreak1000

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well some of you have followed the new tires I put on then painted the letters yellow to break all of the black up. well it took 4 yellow paint pens and about 5 coats on each tire to get it to cover.

well I go out today and the paint has shrunk a little from the cold which I figured it would from the rubber swelling then contracting, leaving black spots in the yellow. I go to touch it up and the older paint smears leaving bigger streaks all the way down to the black of the tire.

long story short it looks like shit up close. now I gotta figure out how to get the yellow off without screwing up the tire or wheels. I was gonna take it to the car wash and try to pressure wash it off but im worried some will come off and some will stay on which will look even worse.
 

danzcool

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if worst comes to worst, you can always have a tire shop flip the tires on the wheels.
 

rcharles

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We painted the letters on my wife's Harley when she got it since it was blacked out. I has been on for 6 years and still looks the same, I've never had to touch it up. What kind of paint did you use? We used a Harley paint pen, 2 coats.
 

speedfreak1000

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yeah years ago I did a set of tires on a 81 Camaro in white and they did great and lasted a long time. I think its just the yellow. I ordered the good pens through summit cause I figured they would work better than the cheap ebay ones.
 

i am ryan

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What kind of paint pen? If it's oil based, something as simple as hair conditioner may work. For acetone or water based, use acetone/nail polish remover.

The idea here is that whatever the base is that pigment is added to in the paint pen will effectively be diluted by your "cleaner." For example, when using an oil based paint pen, trying to remove it with acetone will not only not work efficiently, it may just make a huge freakin' mess. Alcohol will also dry out your tires. How much it will dry them out, I have no idea. Probably not enough to matter, but worth mentioning.


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speedfreak1000

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it all came off fairly easy with just a little bit of gas on a rag. I had it off all 4 tires in about 20 minutes. I didn't know what the effects of the gas would be on the tire so I did one word then washed the tire then went to the next tire and just kept repeating.
 

TGR96

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Sorry to hear this. Those yellow letters did look hawt on your car. Oh well, sometimes mods just don't work out!
 

speedfreak1000

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my thoughts too. I did like them then I drove it one day and the paint shrank and got dingy quick, im just glad it came off so easy.

now my next train of fucked up thinking is have the wheel lip painted or a pinstripe around the wheel cause all the black just doesn't do it for me. checked into getting some yellow plastidip and do the wheel lip so I could peel it off. I've seen a red mustang with black wheels and the lip was red and it looked ok.
 

mavisky

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now my next train of fucked up thinking is have the wheel lip painted or a pinstripe around the wheel cause all the black just doesn't do it for me.

I've never been a fan of all black wheels on any car. It needs a polished lip or something to break it up otherwise it just looks cheap in my opinion.
 

frank s

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I started with the very economical UPS-wheel look in 1957 on my MG TD, and followed up with the same scheme on every sporty or racy-type car I've owned since then—until the Mustangs. I did have a set of the GT500 black-center, polished-lip wheels on the GT/CS convertible.

14997421743_20a855b5bd_o.jpg


If you have black wheels, it's very simple: jack up corner, make a support for your paintbrush, spin the wheel and make the first silver pinstripe at the inner edge of where you want the rim silver to end, fill in the rest to the edge of the wheel, being careful to not paint the tire. Four of those and you are done. With the right combination of paint types on the wheel and edge, the edge can be wiped off with an appropriate solvent, so you can go back to black with little pain, or just change colors. If you really like it one way or another, you can do the rings and clear-coat them.

WRT colored lettering on the tires, I spent a lot of money and time trying to get that right, too. Never found anything that overcame the tires' tendency to exude oils and whatnot that either changed the color of the tire paint (white became a very nice beige in a short time), or didn't let the paint stick in the first place. Maybe tires and paints have changed by now, but in them days, the only way to get good tire lettering was like the factories did it: make a whitewall covered with a blackwall, with voids where the letters stood up, and grind off the black covering to reveal the white.

Actually I did have one success: painted the DUNLOP on some Formula One fronts the same color as the Vega Kammback they were on, with touchup in the factory Vega color, Sunflower Yellow. The paint was good for the life of the tires, which wasn't very long, just four-and-a-half track days and they were DUNFOR.
 

mavisky

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I used to use the Dupli-Color Hot Tires paint pens on my old Eagle Talon, but they haven't produced them for a while now. If you find some they're guaranteed to be dried up and useless. I used to do these by removing them and stippling the paint into the grooves in the lettering. It worked but was super time consuming and required me to clean the tires with a degreaser to have a chance of it sticking in the first place.



As you can see even these were prone to a degradation of color over time.



...and yes those are FR500's. The Talons also ran a 5x114.3 lug pattern, but to fit a 17x9 +24 offset with a 275/40-17 on them you had to run fender flares as the cars originally shipped with 205/55-16's.
 

302GT

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I used the Hot tires on my current set of 555's and it looked great... for about three days... then it turned brown. Now I'm stuck with brown lettering on there. Can't get the shit off either. Tried acetone per DupliColor's suggestion but all that did was smear the paint rather than take it off. A pressure washer took a lot of it off but it's still annoyingly noticeable. I'd hate to try any other chemical on the tires as I worry about it eating at the rubber. Only option I can think of is to flip the tires around on the wheel.
 
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speedfreak1000

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so how do you color the letters white and make it look good?

I don't think you do. you'd have to touch them up every month or so depending how much you drive. the white worked sooo much better than the yellow.
when I did the letters on a 81 Camaro I had to touch them up about every 2 months. its so much easier if the letters are raised versus sunk in like the MT's I had.
 

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