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A fine granulated silvery undercoat used in cherry pearl finish is a pretty good start, but for the almost factory finish look it has to be top coated with clear lacquer.
The lacquer top coat "flattens" the granular or powdery look of the undercoat and depending on degree of gloss of the top coat, you should be able to approximate the wheel cover look. You'll have to do all four though!
I used this method on my TR6 wheels and the result was indistinguishable from factory.
Lawrence - thanks for that suggestion. Wouldn't have thought to do it that way. I'm looking at Kustom Canz products and may give it a try. Don't want to fire up my painting equipment for such a small item (well, 4 items actually) and Kustom Canz aerosols seem to get high marks.
I have found that the silver Rustoleum High Performance Wheel paint and Würth Wheel Paint are both very good matches for the silver metallic paint on Jaguar wheels (and BMW, Mercedes, etc.). The Rustoleum is available at most home stores in the U.S.:
For topcoat I've used the Acrylic Clearcoat from automotivetouchup.com with great results:
They now have a 2K urethane clearcoat I intend to try the next time I do wheels, but a respirator and other safety precautions are mandatory:
Regardless of the finish you use, surface preparation is critical I've found that thoroughly cleaning and degreasing the wheels, followed by scuff-sanding with 320 grit gives the paint a good "tooth" or "key" to bond to but it still flows out smoothly. Since your wheel covers are plastic, you may want to consider using a plastic-bonding primer.
I have also found that two light coats of clearcoat about 10 or 15 minutes apart, followed by one wet coat seems to mimic the factory finish. Too many coats of clear and the finish takes on a depth and gloss that the factory never produced.
Would never have thought they are available new. That beats the heck out of all the sanding/priming/painting. Guess I'll just add them to my cart of other items I was already ordering from Rock Auto. Thanks for pointing that out to me.
In a follow up to my inquiry about the wheel covers, I went ahead and bought a set of 4 from Rock Auto, not paying much attention to their advertisement. And when they arrived, I discovered the dang things are chromed not painted! Haven't brought myself to install them as the appearance is not what I was after. Hardly worth the cost of returning them, they were so inexpensive. Guess it's back to repainting the originals.
Ya gets what ya pays for. And as I noted, they were inexpensive. I may do something weird with them like paint 'em red (on a white car), or play with an odd pattern. Mind you, this coming from someone who also has a red Fiat 500 with (winter) tires mounted on bright orange steel wheels w/ chrome trim rings. Who knows, we'll see what moves me and what colors of spray paint I have lying around.
