DIY repair of plastic centre caps for alloys?

[Mc-BigE]

I have paint flaking off my centre caps from my B5 S4 and thinking of painting them,
Just wondering has anybody tried doing this before?
What I plan to do:
Unclip black plastic ring from back with screwdriver (easy to do),
The chrome covered plastic Audi rings look too difficult to remove, so tape over them for now.
Get off as much of the flaking paint as possible maybe paint stripper but that might damage the plastic. then spray on some sort of primer that sticks to plastic, then buy small silver spray can to match alloy colour and
then finish with clear coat lacquer (if I can buy it in a spray can)

any suggestions?

p.s. might be easer to buy new ones , but i would like to try this first, if i make a mess of it, then ill buy new ones!

[ronaldmacdonald]

I considered doing a spray job as all 4 of mine are manky, however, im a lazy barstool and decided to buy them off ebay at £4 each.

This guy seems to have a plentiful supply
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... %26fvi%3D1

[Mc-BigE]

Update on respray:
Well so far so good! , bought 2 shades of silver and clear coat spray cans
in B&Q , plasticoat ,small cans.
The centre Audi rings are plastic so punch them out from behind and superglue them back in later, you won't be able to do it again so get it right!. sand down with water as much of the existing paint as possible down to the grey/cream plastic with fine wet & dry sandpaper (i used 400 grade) so that the new paint won’t react with the old paint. then clean and spray the darker shade of silver in the middle, 2 or 3 light coats at a time leaving 30mins to dry each.
It didn’t use a primer because this paint “eats” into the plastic a little bit, but doesn’t damage the plastic.
Then cover centre with spray can cap, I used a babies bottle plastic cover! which fitted perfectly! (finally found a proper use for does!) Just stick a small screwdriver through the top of the cap so that you can remove it without getting your hand covered in paint!
Spray lighter silver on the outside, as many light coats as you can! Then remove plastic cap over centre and spray on the clear coat.
Reassemble the rings, and that’s it!

Ii did mine about 3 months ago, I’ve power washed my wheels about every 2 weeks or so and the paint is still sticking! Don’t go too close just in case!


Anyway its up to you if you want to spend about a half a day of time and a small bit of money or buy them on ebay, but the original centre caps for the B5 s4 are hard to find and if there second hand, they might be damaged anyway.

Hope this is useful to somebody!