As a couple of you know Andria and I have been scheming over the last few months on a way to add a little spice to the Rial Daytona race wheels on the R32.
Initially we decided on going with a powdercoated Black Magic Pearl color matched center and having the clearcoat removed from the lips and getting them highly polished... too easy right? Think again. Me being the anal person in the family I inisted that the centers had to be powdercoated rather than painted as I wanted a nice durable lasting finish. Color matching the paint would have been a no-brainer. The problem is that there is no pre-mixed Black Magic Pearl powdercoat finish.
Keep in mind I'm kind of out of the country so Andria was orchestrating all this madness.
After several trips to Spectrum Powderworks Andria determined that while a close match to BMP was possible, there was just no way to have a custom powdercoat color mixed locally that would be an exact match to the BMP. "Close" just wouldn't cut it and for obvious reasons would look gay.
After some brainstorming we decided to go with a Diamond Black or Black chrome colored finish for the centers. Much like the BBS RS-GT wheels if you've ever seen them. The powdercoating guy assured Andria that he could pull that color off without a hitch ... so we decided to go for it. If some of you read my other comments on this operation there was a lot of legwork to make this happen. The wheels had to first be disassembled. J&S Polishing handled that task with ease. Then the barrels had to be taken to another shop to be bead blasted, and from there they went to Spectrum to be powdercoated. All the while J&S was polishing up the lips.
One other addition was a pair of 9 1/2 inch wheels for the rear. I wanted to have a full set of 8 1/2's all around plus the 9 1/2's just for the hell of it. So this operation was being performed on a total of 6 wheels. Gotta give Anne some Mad Props for helping Andria out with the logistics of hauling all these wheels around, without her help it wouldn't have happened. :thumbup:
So anyway...I waited in anticipation to see how the barrels turned out from the powdercoating.
.and finally Andria sent me a pic of the barrels and I immediately knew that we were in trouble. The work done was awesome, but the color just didn't look right. At this point it was too late to turn back so we proceded as planned. A couple days later I got to see pics of the wheels completely assembled... I was impressed, they were quite flashy...but again the color just didn't look right for a BMP car.
So a couple days go by..and again with Anne's assistance... Andria get's the 8 1/2 inch set of wheels mounted up on the car and sends me pics. As you can see in the pic below the color clearly is not Diamond black, it's more of a blackish Anthracite. And obviously, unless I'm color blind it's a huge clash with the Black Magic Pearl.
Needless to say at this point we were at a total loss. Luckily due to Andria's resourcefulnes
s she had been showing a few behind the scenes progress pics of the wheels to the good folks of SoCal
.:R32 and one particular guy had developed a hard on for the wheels before they were ever finished. His car is silver so of course these would probably look quite nice. Late last night a couple messages were sent to this guy and before I knew it I had a hefty sum of money in my Paypal account :wink: SOLD, all six wheels in a matter of minutes.
The first thing I did was breath a sigh of relief because believe me when I say that I had a small fortune invested in these wheels...lucki
ly I only lost a couple hundred dollars or so when it was all said and done.
Call me crazy if you want... the first thing Andria did this morning was to place a call and order a brand new set of Rial Daytona wheels in 8 1/2 & 9 1/2 fitment. There's something about these wheels that won't let me part with them...I just really like these wheels, LOL Needless to say once again Andria will be embarking on a small mission of customizing the new set of wheels but it will not be anything nearly as drastic as the first attempt. :-P
Sorry for the long post...I just wanted to share our little adventure with you guys.
And here's a pic of the wheels...I'm sure you'll all agree that this combo just plain does not work.
If you look closely you can see that depending on whether or not the wheels are in the direct sunlight the color looks quite different. This is something I really didn't like about the color.
And lastly I have to give the Mrs. some credit here...she's definitely becoming quite the customizer in my absense, LOL
