Alloy Wheel Scraping Repair

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charlestek

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An hour ago, I had the displeasure of driving too close to a granite curb when parking and managed to chew up a 3 inch edge of the car's alloy wheel, plus some other scrapes more on the body of the wheel. I know the only great fix would be to dismount the wheel, grind the metal down and repaint the wheel and remount the tire, but that obviously is expensive and time consuming.

Has anyone had any success with an alloy wheel filler/epoxy? I see some on Amazon and there was a specific alloy wheel filler on Ebay that is sold out. I imagine autobody filler would work too, but that comes in larger amounts, though I may have something in my cellar, but it would not be aluminum alloy color.
 
detailsbydennis said:
Machine face or painted wheel


Sent from my iPhone using Autogeekonline mobile app
Click to expand...

Both machined and painted.
Shared album Google Photos

The damage is on the machined edges. The curb was white granite, but there are black streaks in
the embeded scratches. I tried some Meguiars Heavy compound on the scarred edges and somehow pulled out some black color, but the embedded black streaks stayed.

You can see the fine grooves in the machining, but it appears that the metal is coated with some kind of satin paint.

If I could match the paint and just spot spray the areas, it should be much less visible.

Trouble is there is no way to extract a "paint chip" for a paint shop to match.

This is a Honda Accord Sport Wheel.

I spoke to a local shop and they want $150 to dismount the tire and CNC cut the damaged areas flat and ? repaint?
 
I had something similar happen with the right rear wheel of my Ram pickup. About 8"-10" along the outside edge of the wheel was damaged on an 8" high concrete curb that the rear wheel rode up against. I began by sanding the scratches with a small sanding disc (1" diameter) on a Dremel tool removing the heavy damage. I continued with 220G using a narrow backer board to keep the sanding flat, then followed with 320G, 400G, 30 micron, and 15 micron 3M sandpaper. I then moved to rubbing compound followed by polishing compound and finally Wheel Wax. I didn't take any before photos of the rim because I thought I was going to end up replacing it because the gouges were so deep. Imagine running a course wood rasp across the face of the wheel, that's what it looked like. I cannot tell where the damage was on the wheel now. My rims are clear coated and I removed the clear coat in the area I sanded but have seen no discoloration or discernible difference between the repaired area and the rest of the rim.

The area where you have most of the damage on the wheel is where I sanded out my rim. You need to make sure you are sanding flat so you don't change the profile.
 
Vince,

I have a Black and Decker RTX, which will take Dremel attachements. I presume you mean a mini drum sanding attachment.

Dremel makes a Sanding/Grinding Guide: A576 Sanding Grinding Guide - dremel.com

but one would have to dismount the tire to use it.
 
I actually used a 220G sanding disk that fits on a spindle and is held with a small machine screw and free handed that part to remove the heavy damage then moved to hand sanding as I described above. The damaged area was 1/2" wide at the outermost edge of the wheel. I wrapped the sandpaper around a 3/4" x 3/4" piece of wood for a backer board. This took several hours carefully working the damaged area. All this was done with the wheel and tire on the truck. I just rotated it as needed to be able to sand comfortably.
 
Vince,

Yeah, I'm sorry, I should read better. You did say disc.

I would have to go buy some discs, all I have are cutting wheels.

I briefly played with a small file on the area, but it was too large to fit on the edge, but I did manage a few motions. It appears that this metal is somewhat tough, apparently you had no trouble grinding down the alloy?

Please describe this "backer board" you used....
 
Vince,

I found this YouTube video:YouTube

The author uses a Dremel "flat disc" which is an accordion pleated narrow wheel for the dremel.

Did you use this kind of disc, or a disc with the abrasive coating the outside of the disc?

Compared to this video, I think my scratches, really deep serration/gouges are deeper than a surface scratch.
 
Any repair process you decide to do will be very time consuming and costly. If I were you I would just bring it to a shop specialized in refinishing mags. Around here in Montreal, they charge about 150$ to do the work. So that's like 115 US$. If you do it yourself, it will probably cost you about 20-30$ in material and at least 4 hours of your time (probably more) and the result will not be as good if it's the first time you are doing it. Up to you. If you want to see the whole repair process, search youtube for ChrisFix's video on wheel repair. He uses the sanding and filling technique.
 
Charles,

The backer board was a short piece of scrap hardwood from my shop, 3/4" x 3/4" x 6" that I wrapped the sandpaper around to keep it flat and not dish out the section of the rim. There will be a small amount of taper and blending necessary since you are removing material from the edge of your rim. I actually found that same video and several others and decided to try repairing this since I had all the tools and supplies necessary on hand.
 
Vince,

Thank you for the details. I will have to mull over what I want to do. I certainly don't want to repaint the whole wheel. I would probably have to get some paint mixed by an autobody supply store to match what is on the wheel, and that would
be moderately expensive as either a pint, since I believe the store only does a minimum of a pint, or you can get a custom rattle can for somewhat less. The video I linked to showed that the accordion pleat narrow cylinder dremel sanding (drum) seems to work really well. Since the drum is perpendicular to the shaft, that should make it a lot easier to sand. However, if I were to do this, I think I would have to use spot putty or some filler, since grinding the
edge down flush would make too much of a depression in the edge of the wheel. If I used filler, then I probably don't need to sand very deeply at all.

However, the wheel does get hot from braking and I really question how durable some putty or fiberglass would be......

In addition, since the wheel recess areas are painted black, if one were to do a whole wheel paint job, there would be a lot of masking involved.

Calendyr,

I already said that I found one shop locally that CNC mills the damaged areas, and they estimated $150 without looking at a photo, which I subsequently sent, but the shop was closing for the weekend.

Canadian to US dollar might work if it weren't for the fact that I'm next to Boston, and the cost of living here is like 30% higher than the national average.
 
As to paint color match...those look (to me) to be '18 Subaru wheels. Check out a Subby dealer, ya might just be able to score a 'touch-up' bottle.

Good luck...

Bill
 
Bill,

Actually they are 2017 Honda Accord Wheels. I never heard of a car manufacturer making touch up paint for wheels.... Would be nice if they did.
 
Alloy Wheel Filler

Came upon this Isopon Alloy wheel filler that is available at Amazon and Walmart:

YouTube
 
Painted or Polished Wheels?

Here's a further wrinkle.

Was doing google research and came across the company that supplies lathes and refinishing to many of these local jobbers.

This webpage indicates that my wheel could be polished metal or painted metal or some combination:

Alloy Wheel Repair - Painted

Alloy Wheel Repair - Polished

For a polished wheel all you can do is sand down and polish, and probably clearcoat.
 
BillE said:
As to paint color match...those look (to me) to be '18 Subaru wheels. Check out a Subby dealer, ya might just be able to score a 'touch-up' bottle.

Good luck...

Bill
Click to expand...

Many problems with that:

1. There probably would not be enough paint in a touch up kit to repair a wheel. The amount of paint is very minimal.
2. Using a brush to touch up large areas would be very visible and it would look horrible. You need to spray the whole wheel if you want it to look good.
3. I don't think that the colors are available at dealers for wheels. I might be wrong but there is no color code for wheels on the vehicle, so it is unlikelly it is offered.
 
Calendyr,

1) If I was using touch up paint, and I never said anywhere I was, ( I said touch up the damaged area), I would be only doing the damaged area.

2) It appears that the shiny areas of this wheel are not painted but polished metal, which limits using paint, see: YouTube

For a polished rim, you have to take off/down/lathe/grind metal from the entire circumference of the wheel, i.e. remove good and bad metal until the area is evenly machined and flat again; then sand and buff until smooth and shiny.

3) I never said I was looking for paint at wheel dealers. I said I would want to have an auto body paint shop custom blend an exact paint match.
If the wheel is painted then an auto paint shop could indeed make a custom match, but they would have to be able to scan the color on the wheel and subjectively tweak it
(Go to Home Depot some time and bring a color paint chip from your wall and ask them to blend a gallon of wall paint for you.... it's the same idea)

Of course if the shiny area on my wheel is polished, not painted (except for clear coat) then that won't help.
 
charlestek said:
Bill,

Actually they are 2017 Honda Accord Wheels. I never heard of a car manufacturer making touch up paint for wheels.... Would be nice if they did.
Click to expand...

Uncanny resemblance!

I was thinking more along the line that MAYBE a dealer would be able to give some sort of an idea for a paint. Also, again 'a maybe', their body shop might have some ideas.

Don't know if this is even possible...some paint shops (automobile) may have a way to match color like they can do for 'wall paint' (?).

Bill
 
Re: Painted or Polished Wheels?

I looked at the photo you posted again and it looks like most of the damage is on what appears to be a polished outside edge. Was the painted area damaged as well? If the wheel is going to need to be machined anyway I would look to sand parallel to the flat edge until the damaged area is removed then gradually taper this out followed by compounding and polishing. You may need to do the entire "pie shaped" area along the top edge. This may result in a thicker looking edge profile where you've sanded deeper into the wheel. I really couldn't tell from the angle of your photo. Below is what my rim looked like after the repair. These were optional wheels for the Ram when I ordered it in 2015 and I took a chance at trying to repair the damage before looking into replacing the wheel because of the cost.
 
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