hubcaps, rims question?

Clean and paint rims with black gloss Rustoleum.

Find stainless or chrome trim rings or sometimes called beauty rings.

Never need to remove to change wheel.

Looks sharp.

Profit!

If you don't have mag wheels, you have steelies. They're not stainless, just painted black. If the paint gets chipped or scratched, yep, the steel (iron) will rust. The most susceptible areas are the edges, like the lip around the hub hole or the outside of the rim edges.

I've just called them wheels. To me, rims are the outside edge of the wheel where the tires seat.

Don't know how aluminum [mag] or steel wheels aka rims could rip with you using a lug wrench. You're not Superman. Could be you flattened the shoulder inside the hole against which the nut pushes (i.e., the seat), but that means you used the wrong shaped nuts. The shoulder on the nut has to match the seat in the wheel's. The basic seat types are: cone, round (or ball), and flat. If you move from steelies to mags, you have to NOT reuse the lug nuts from the steelies, and get new nuts for the aluminum magnesium wheel.

Similarly in the misuse of terms, do you mean "wheel cover" when you say "hub caps"? Hub caps go only over the hub in the center hole of the wheel to keep dust and grime from getting into the hub. I'm old school. There were hub caps that were a semishere metal cap that covered the hub through the hole in the center hold of a wheel. Then there were wheel covers. The term hub cab has been misused for so long that consumers now call wheel covers as hub caps.

To me, that's a hub cap.

That's a wheel cover (known to consumer as hub caps nowadays).

Although there are still plastic clips (aka tangs), the metal retention ring that goes around them can be grooved for a more secure fit.

Few wheel covers, erm, hub caps are for a specific car. They're universal fit and based on wheel size (diameter). Because they MUST flex to pinch into the wheel well, I can't see them being made of stiff thick metal. If metal, it would have to thin to let you flex it to push into the wheel well, so a metal one would be as flimsy as a plastic one. I have seen chrome plated (on ABS plastic base) wheel "skins". That's for looks. It just a thick laquer paint job. It's not chromed metal.

Why not skip the wheel covers, use a wire brush in a cordless drill, clean the steelies, and apply new paint?

The rust treatment referred to in the video is what I call rust converter, a primer that chemically alters iron oxide. The converter paint has tannic acid (to react with any remnant rust by converting it to iron tannate which sticks versus rust that flakes off) and an organic polymer for a primer layer. No matter how well you clean rust by hand, microscopic bits will still be left behind, and will start rusting again and punch through your new paint job. Any rust left behind after cleaning will turn black after the treatment, and likely your steelies are black painted.

If you don't want to do the wheel repaint job, ask a paint shop what they would charge. To me, a blacked out steelie with a good paint job is a style in itself and can look more impressive than a plastic wheel cover; however, the wheels are more susceptible to stone or gravel nicks without the wheel covers. A solid black tire with a solid black wheel is impressive. Makes your tires look bigger, not smaller, unless your car is also solid black, but that would be impressive with tires and wheels that blend into the body for one solid black mass.

If you have a shop do the paint job, you'll probably want a powder coat job that electrostatically bonds the paint to the wheel during the painting process, and uses an oven to bake the paint, but is expensive, like $165/wheel. Powder coating is more durable than spray-on liquid paints. The wheel covers simply cover a dusty rusty steelie, and let you forget to maintenance and clean them regularly.