Recolouring Wheels — TSL43.info

I have a Long Range All Wheel Drive Performance without Performance Upgrades. This means I have the dark grey 18” wheels with aero covers. Under the aero covers are some quite nice, quality wheels. Plenty of people get their car home, remove the aero covers, fit centre caps and lug nut covers and leave the car like that forever more.

I like the design of the 18” wheels but I’m not a huge fan of the dark colour. It makes the wheels look smaller than they are and does not match the red or chrome finish of the rest of the car. From there I have two options - aftermarket wheels or recolouring the standard wheels. Because I like the design and would like to have the option of putting the aero covers on whenever I like I went down the path of having the standard wheels recoloured.

Choices.

The next choice to make is how to recolour them, and what to recolour them. My ideal goal was to match the chrome trim on the car so I investigated trying to have the wheels chrome plated or finished in something that resembles chrome as much as possible. The options I investigated were:

Real Chrome - The issue with real chrome is that it doesn’t last and will very soon decide that it wants to part ways with aluminium. I want something durable and trouble-free. This is not it.
Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD) Chrome - this is what most chrome-look wheels have. It’s a technically complex process that coats the wheel with alternating layers of clear film and mirror film. Its durable but only a couple of places in Australia do it and neither does wheels. A few places in the US do it exchange, even specifically for the Model 3 18s, but none ship to Australia. By the time I used a 3rd party shipping company each way the job would have been at least $2500AUD, which is a bit much.
Painting the wheels - This is probably the easiest and cheapest option. Most places do it same-day without unmounting the tyres. Lots of finishes are available including some very bright chrome-like finishes. The issue here is that I’ve had wheels repaired and repainted previously and the resulting finish is very soft and chips quite easily. Maybe this was a poor experience. Maybe it’s how it is. I wanted the result to be durable so I scratched this option.
Super Chrome Powder Coating - This looked like a great option however several local shops either refused to do it or said that I wouldn’t like the results based on their previous experience. It’s possible they aren’t doing it properly but given I heard the same from a multitude of sources I was inclined to take their word for it.

After lots of back and forth and many many emails and phone calls I settled on having a Specialised Industrial Coatings in Ipswich powder coat them in Alien Silver. It’s quite a bright silver with plenty of sparkle which I think matches the chrome trim well. I spoke to many other shops but SIC made me the most comfortable about the finish I was looking for and the quality of their work.

The Process.

To have the wheels powder coated you need to strip the tyres and all fittings from the wheels so they can be baked in a very hot oven. Any plastic or rubber parts will melt and fall off. Most good shops also have a lot of work on so your job gets placed in a queue so you need to be able to leave the wheels with the shop for several weeks. If you want to drive the car in the meantime - like I do - you’ll need some temporary wheels with the correct dimensions. TSportLine make a great range of aftermarket wheels specifically designed for Tesla and they also list all the gritty details you need to get your wheels to fit.

From this you can see that the wheel we need is a 18x8.5+40 5x113.4. These are fairly common and fit many cars including the Nissan Skyline. So I trawled Facebook Marketplace and found some suitable straight wheels for $400, tyres included. The tyres were old and not of sufficiently high load rating for the Model 3 so I had them recycled. These wheels did have a +35 offset which makes the track of the car 10mm wider overall. Nothing to worry about and not at all noticeable cosmetically or dynamically.

The temporary wheels I bought from Facebook Marketplace

Once you have wheels you need two things to get them to fit the Model 3:

Centric rings to adapt from the diameter of the wheel (in my case 73.1mm) bore to the size of the cars hub (64.1mm). $16.85 delivered for the set.
Lug nuts with the correct face/diameter for your wheels and thread for the Model 3 (M14x1.5) $70 delivered for the set. In my case I had wheels with quite small holes and the Model 3 has quite large studs. The studs fit through the wheels but I had to use spline-drive nuts to get ones thin enough to fit in the wheels.

With these in hand you can go to a tyre shop and get the wheels swapped onto the car. This typically costs $25/wheel for stripping, fitting and balancing. So $100 to have the original wheels removed and the spares fitted.

Four wheels, with tyres, fit in the boot with the seats folded down. four wheels without tyres fit in the boot with the seats up.

Some key points when dealing with the tyre shop:

Make sure they use the jacking points detailed in the owner’s manual. If they don’t they can damage the battery! Keep an eagle eye out for how they are doing it and possibly print out the relevant pages from the manual for them. Take jacking adaptors for them to use.
There is an M6 bolt holding the brake disc to the hub. It probably won’t clear the aftermarket wheels so you’ll need to remove it. Thats fine - its only there to keep the discs on during manufacturing. Keep the bolts though so you can re-fit them when the original wheels go back on.
Be prepared to answer a lot of questions about the car.

My wheels in the process of being stripped bare ready for coating

Then you get the original wheels powder coated. SIC had a lot of trouble getting the original dark grey paint off. Apparently it’s some of the toughest two pak coating they have ever seen. But they got there!

I also had them powder coat some third-party centre caps which cost $11.19 for a set of four delivered. The alloy needs to be separated from the plastic carrier using a hot air gun to soften the double sided tape.

The powder coating cost $1140.00.

Once the wheels have been fitted back onto the car (another $100) I then sold the temporary wheels for $350 on Facebook Market - I threw in the centric rings and lug nuts as they aren’t much use to me.

To finish off the chrome look I also bought some chrome covers for the original lug nuts. They cost $11.80 for the set of twenty delivered.

I also purchased a small suction cup to assist with removing the centre caps when using the aero covers for $1.47 delivered.

This brings the total project cost to $1498.98.

Not cheap, and not cheaper than cheap aftermarket wheels- but I think the results look great, are brilliant quality and I can still use the aero covers easily.

With the aero covers back on you can still see a ring of silver from the wheel itself