Anyone powder painted their Cosmic wheels?

[Richard48Y]

Power was out most of the day here so I looked for something to do manually.
I have ten Cosmic wheels to refinish, six Lotus and four for TR4.
Working on just one today I am reminded how labor intensive this could be.
I used aluminum duct tape to mask off the bare aluminum areas.
I plan to soda-blast the black to bare aluminum without affecting the bright areas then buff with scratch pads.
A bit more tedious than expected but I hope the masking will hold up well enough to leave it in place for repainting.
Just doing one for now as an experiment.
Not a horrible job and I am certain I would not want to pay someone else for their time to do it either.
If this works well it should be possible to PP silver then mask for black/dark grey.
I found a shop to redo the original diamond-cut for them but the cost is the same as just buying the new reproductions!
Thinking that PP should be less cost and very durable, particularly if I do the masking.
I think PP can be masked with normal paper tape.
PP is not original of course but my plan is to DRIVE this car.
Anyone else done PP on their Cosmic's?

[Cheguava]

Hi, no help on the powder coating I'm afraid, but in the same boat as you albeit just the five Cosmics to refinish. Went through the same cost/benefit analysis as you did with the idea of getting them diamond cut, only to find I could have bought a new set from Cosmic (or whoever holds the IP for them now), plus I'm trying to do as much as I can, and this will be the 9th or 10th set of alloys I've refurbed, including a set of Cosmics for my Mini half a lifetime ago, so hopeful of an acceptable outcome.

Only thing I can offer which you may already know about is that you can get scotch pads for rotary sander/polishers, which I didn't know about until I watched a few YouTube wheel refurb videos for tips. Ordered a set which arrived this week so not had chance to test them yet on the spare, they are marked 3M (but came from China so who knows) and might reduce some of the sheer drudgery and fingerprint recognition fails that follow doing it manually. Will post again when I have tried them out.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/224123446309?var=522912300925

[Richard48Y]

Found out there are a couple of ways to handle the two-tone PP.
One requires masking, the other does not.
Masking does require a special tape.
My local PP guy had to move his shop and is now waiting on permits to resume business.
I hope to speak with him on Monday but I know he is WAYYYYYY backed up with work.
Still considering a change to Gold, I think Gold wheels would really stand out.

[Richard48Y]

Update on wheel preparation.
Soda blast is a bit too much for the aluminum tape I was using to mask the bright areas.
So I'm going to use chemical stripper then try to only have to soda blast the cast area lightly to provide a good clean surface for painting.
I may cheat and just use epoxy paint instead of PP as I do not have my own oven and the PP shop is both expensive and backed up for months.

[Richard48Y]

First experiment with spray-bomb paint was a Fail.
Product does NOT match the finish represented by the cap.
I got all the wheels as clean and paint free as two applications of paint remover followed by a pressure washer can get them.
I still have to strip the experimented on wheel again.