Painted wheels - returning to OEM

[wlfpck]

Hey guys... Got a couple question about the stock wheels... A buddy is trading in his tC for a FR-S and unfortunately his wheels are painted. The difference according to the dealership is that if he had the stock wheels, it would be $500 more to the trade-in value. How does this work... I'm not quite sure... 1) What color is it? (as in would the duplicolor silver wheel paint match?) 2) Is the wheel painted? aka... how is it colored that silvery color? 3) If we used paint thinner on the wheels, obviously the black paint would come off, but would the original silver paint come off? 4) What material is the oem wheel made of? (more of my own curiosity) So our options as of right now is to repaint it the original or some how take the black paint off. Thanks!

[Jon]

To my knowledge, Toyota/Scion won't give the paint code/method. You could strip them to bare metal and polish them, but that's a lot of work for $500 and he's not keeping the car. He'd be better off buying a used set from someone for $250 and just net the other half from the trade in value.

[driftmotion]

just paint it any silver color with clear coat, they'll look pretty good

and oem wheels are made of aluminum alloy

[wlfpck]

Originally Posted by Jon

To my knowledge, Toyota/Scion won't give the paint code/method. You could strip them to bare metal and polish them, but that's a lot of work for $500 and he's not keeping the car. He'd be better off buying a used set from someone for $250 and just net the other half from the trade in value.

Yeah that's the problem. In the area that we're currently in. There is no one within a good 75 miles that are selling stock un-painted wheels.

As for stripping them and polishing them, that'd be different than the stock silver color so the dealership would still not give him the extra $500.

I think we may try the paint thinner and then see how that goes. If it goes poorly (as in take off the original clear and color) we'll just paint it silver.