Amazing what $10 in paint can do

And another $950 in tyres...

last week while towing my little boat, I noticed that the valve stem on the driver's side rear was hissing.  Taking a closer look, the rubber was dryrotted and cracked.  As I am still on furlough from work, I really did not want to replace my tyres, but the place that does the work would not demount and remount such obviously well worn bit of rubber.  So off to Tirerack I went to get some new dud for the Disco.

I already had some Yokohama Geolanders on my Landy, so I stuck with them, moving up to the "all terrain"  Geolander AT G015.  This allows me to not worry too much about the small amount of snow we get here in South Jersey, nor do I need to worry about crawling over rocks in the small amount of off-roading we do here.  Everything here is packed dirt, mud, and what is called "sugar sand".

So here we are: All mounted up and painted from the faded and dull silver to a nice graphite.

Original:

Graphite:

It was a good thing too, I discovered that I only had 1 good tyre on the truck.  I knew the passenger front was badly worn, the Driver's rear had the bad stem, but the passenger rear had a big bolt through the treads that had been there long enough to get completely worn down to the edge of the rubber inside the tread.  The one good tyre went on the spare position.

Geolander AT G015:

Looks nice!  I really don't like black wheels, but that metallic graphite looks spiffy as heck.

yes, I am no fan of black rims either.  My Abarth has the graphite rims too, and I did the same to my old 318ti.  I like the subtle understatedness of Graphite over silver or black.

Inspiring.  I might do that to the Civic’s faux aluminum wheel look hub caps, as they need a refresh anyway.

Agreed that graphite wheels look great on almost anything.  As a bonus, you don't really see that they are dirty. 

Here is Mrs. Sonic's Mazda3 with RX8 wheels painted graphite, this was a few years ago, the car has over 247k miles on it now, 2.5 swap, Konis, big brakes, etc

And here's my former Z4M coupe with 19" CSL reps, powercoated gray

In reply to Sonic :

Not to thread jack, but do you feel that the 2.5-swap is worth it on the Mazda3?

In reply to fanfoy :

From the one I helped with, it was a pure economics choice. The 2.3L developed a rod knock and a used 2.3L was over 1K where a 2.5L was under $300 with the much less miles. The parts to change over were not more than $200 IIRC and there was a slight bonus of more horsepower. It wasn't as drastic of a difference as a 2.5L in a miata but the combination of replacing a tired engine and a little more displacement made a bit of a difference. I don't think I'd do it just to do it unless there was a compelling factor like the stock engine going south. 

In reply to fanfoy :

I would do it just for the sake of doing it, but it is a solid improvement in torque.  In our case a young friend of the family with a different mazda3 2.3 blew a motor and we helped him out by swapping our drivetrain into his car to get him going again, as we have extra cars.  It was a excuse to replace our 162k mile motor and 5 speed with a 900 mile 2.5 motor and a 70k mile 6 speed, which all bolts right in and only cost about $1100 from the junkyards. It ended up being a win win.  If we were to do cams and intake manifold and tune we could make some serious power, but as thus has been a daily driver we left it stock and it is very satisfying.  80k later and it uses no oil still.