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I have purchased a handbuilt rear wheel that will be used with a disc brake and never with a rim brake (it has a 6 bolt hub). The rim is a mavic a719.

The rim is anodized black but the machined part (rim brake surfact) is silver. Ideally I'd like it to be black for aesthetic purposes and was thinking about giving it a light coat of spray paint.

Is there any reason that this is a bad idea? Is there any other way of easily making it black?

NB: I'm aware that there are non machined rims available. I'm aware that some my see it as ugly or poor etiquette to run a disc hub and machined rim. After a lot of research, I concluded that this was the rim I wanted.

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  • Can we assume you'd do this with no tyre fitted and mask everything very well? Beware that spray paint doesn't stick very well to bare aluminium
    – Chris H
    Commented Aug 24, 2017 at 12:05
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    yeah of course, no tyre, all masked up. i mean it's not the end of the world if the paint comes off... just for completeness sake really
    – Rich
    Commented Aug 24, 2017 at 12:20

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I've had many sets of painted rims. All of them were painted by a professional whose day job was cars. I have no idea what the prep and such involved was, but all of them looked great until I cracked the rims, had large rocks take chunks out, whichever.

Paint is certainly not going to hurt your metal rim, and it may offer it some protection. Whether or not the paint stays on (which doesn't actually seem to be your question) is a matter involving far too many variables (prep, materials, care, conditions) to answer. Unless you are planning to use some frightening type of paint I haven't heard of, you won't damage the rim by painting it.

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  • Concur - its more in the preparation before painting, than the painting itself.
    – Criggie ♦
    Commented Aug 24, 2017 at 15:11
  • Going along with the car guy route, I might look into getting it powder coated. lots of body shops will coat just about anything metal you bring in to them relatively inexpensively. It would likely be a much nicer looking, and definitely a more durable finish.
    – Aaron
    Commented Aug 24, 2017 at 16:58
  • Yes. True. I have two other sets I sent out to be coated. I recommend having a conversation with a painter or powdercoater first. My paint guy rode (a lot) so he understood what things were important when painting a rim and everything was awesome. My powder coated rims were different. Work done at two different shops. Both very durable and still look great. One however, was absolutely thicked on. Unnecessary weight add.
    – Deleted User
    Commented Aug 24, 2017 at 17:03

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