Painting the rims
 

Hi!

I'm planning on painting my stock 2009 enduro rims. I want to paint them black, haven't decided whether matte or glossy is the way to go. Problem is that I'm not really sure what kind of paint and primer I should use. Are the stock rims aluminium or steel? I don't want to paint the spokes nor the nipples, just the rims. Has anyone done that? How well does it hold up?

If your set on painting the trims black, go with hi gloss, much easier to clean the mud and dirt off.
I have a 2018 Camo version which comes with the shiny black rims and what a pain! Just like black cars and trucks, looks nice when clean but will show every nick, scratch and spec of dust or dirt.
Personally I would stay with the silver/aluminum.

Black rims are so appealing for me that I want to give it a shot at least. I'm thinking about 2K clear coat on top, which is claimed to be very resistant to scratches. Not sure, but if I remember well ceramic coat does a nice a job preventing dirt from sticking to painted surfaces. Maybe you should try that and then share your experiences :)

Painting dirt bike rims is "almost" a lost cause. It's probably not even worth pursuing unless you get them powder coated. And there is a ceramic coating process that helps. However, all this requires having a "naked" rim. Even on a street bike, powder coating and such is basically a requirement. Even then they show quite a few "boogers" after a bit and the later result often looks worse than when left alone. But then that's the beauty of freedom of choice. I do see a difficulty and effectiveness of the final product when doing this with a fully assembled rim/wheel.

This isn't good news. I was thinking about powder coating but the thing holding me back is that I'm afraid of disassemblying the rims.

Just get some black duct tape and have at it. Cheaper, easier, if they get scratched, .... more tape!

Spray bomb. Shoot 'em every few rides. Jack it up, spin and spray!

I'd always stay with bare aluminum on any off road bike and I'm considering stripping the XSR wheels. Black shows everything from light dust and up. I'll let someone else have the cool looking black rims and the clean up time.

And I believe some aftermarket rims are anodized, aren't they? Anodizing is more durable than paint or powdercoat and maybe a little prettier in most cases. Even then, anodized isn't indestructible.

I'm getting less and less excited about black wheels :( Probably I'll leave this rims natural and if I ever buy supermoto wheels, they gonna be black.

Dam, thinking I want to take a pedal bike out to the end of a gravel road and leave the moto there. I want to take the beamer, but it has black rims, dam. No moto's in the wilderness.