Can you touch up metallic wheel paint?

Ah the joys of living in a vacuum, where birds never poop on your windshield, ditzy drivers never ding your car doors, no rascally pebble attacks your gloriously-painted wheels and the sidewalk never rises up to personally assault them either. Back to life on the Wasatch Front, where pesky pebbles, sadistic sidewalks and oblivious owner-operators come in all shapes, sizes and damage levels….

A professional, expertly-applied wheel paint job should be able to withstand all manner of insult and injury, but sometimes even with this level of protection, the forces of nature and naughty (humans) can do a real number on your beautiful painted rims. 

This is particularly true of metallic wheel paints. If something manages to pierce or scratch their surface down to the bald wheel metal, it looks both obvious and ugly. If you’ve ever tried touching up a surface painted with metallic paint, you’ll know how incredibly difficult it is to get a smooth, even result. So can your painted wheels be saved?

Salt City Wheels in beautiful Salt Lake City, Utah have been customizing and saving wheels since the dawn of….well, Salt City Wheels, really. Our mobile wheel experts will be able to determine on-sight how best to bring your wheels back up to scratch (minus the scratch).

If you’ve applied the paint yourself, it may be difficult not only to color match it perfectly but also to match the level and type of metallic particles contained in a non-professional metal paint. Not impossible necessarily, but fiddly, to say the least. At this point, if you have painted them yourself and they’ve been damaged, it may be worth considering having them blasted back to their naked state and creating a new, bullet-proof (if they’re plastic bullets shot from ten miles away), professionally-applied surface that will be able to withstand future damage with more vigor and vim.

If you want to try to retain the original pain effect on the wheel, we will be able to tell you whether the paint can be sanded back around the damage and resprayed with a professional paint. This is obviously a less-predictable option, since the paint will likely not be the same as the original, non-professional paint used, and so there is potential with a metallic finish for some slight variance. Our wheel experts will be honest with you about the best way to go and leave the final choice to you.

If your wheels were professionally-painted from the get-go, hoorah and hooray! Professional automotive paint is much more durable, pigment-intensive and predictable than non-professional metal paint, and can usually be well-matched. Depending on the extent of the damage, Salt City Wheels may recommend either a spot repair to sand back the area around the damage and respray it, or if the damage is substantial, they will be able to take the wheel back to its original state and respray it with multiple thin layers of primer, paint and protective sealant. 

However bad the damage and whatever type of paint was originally used, your beautiful, sparkly metallic wheels can be restored to their former glistening glory. Give the professionals at Salt City Wheels a call today at 801 425 3044 to schedule your FREE consultation.