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Wheel repair — cosmetic curbing
Curb rash on the lip, sanded, filled, re-cut and refinished on the car. Every wheel checked for runout and cracks first — and that check is allowed to end the job.
Curb rash is a finish problem
Sliding an alloy along a curb takes the coating and a little of the aluminum off the outer lip. It is ugly, it is on the part of the wheel everybody looks at, and it is genuinely cosmetic — the wheel is doing its job exactly as before. That is the repair we do: sand the damaged lip back to sound metal, fill where the alloy is gouged, re-cut the profile so the lip is the shape the designer drew, then prime, color and clear.
An hour to ninety minutes a wheel, done on the car, with the tire still on for lip and face work. Masking the tire and the brake properly is most of the setup.
The check that comes first, every time
Before any of that, the wheel gets spun and watched for runout and inspected around the inner barrel for cracks — the inside face, where a crack from a pothole actually starts and where nobody standing beside the car ever looks. This check is not a formality and it is not there to pad the invoice. It is allowed to end the job, and sometimes it does.
A bent or cracked rim does not get a cosmetic repair from us. Not a filled one, not a painted one, not a “it will be fine, it is only slightly out” one. Covering structural damage with a finish so that it looks fine is the worst thing anybody in this trade can do, because the customer then drives away believing the wheel was inspected and passed. That wheel goes to a specialist with a straightening press, or it gets replaced. There is no version of it that ends with us painting over it.
Painted, machined and everything else
A painted or powder-coated face is straightforward to match on site. A machined or diamond-cut face is not: that finish is produced by a lathe skimming the face of the wheel to leave fine concentric turning marks under clear, and a lathe does not fit in a van. We can repair the painted inner spokes and the lip on one of those and make it look right, and we say so plainly. A full machined face is a workshop job on a wheel lathe. What we will not do is spray silver over a cut face and hope you do not look at it in daylight next to the other three.
Chrome and PVD wheels are plated, not painted, and there is no on-car repair for them that does not look worse than the damage. Those get a straight no.
Two small things worth saying
If the wheel has a pressure sensor and the tire is coming off for a full face refinish, the valve service kit gets replaced while it is apart, because putting an eight year old rubber grommet back into a wheel you have just spent ninety minutes making perfect is asking for a slow leak in February.
And matching is per wheel, not per set. A single refinished wheel next to three that are four years old will be very slightly cleaner-looking. Most people never notice. Some people notice immediately, and if you are one of them, all four is the answer — which is worth knowing before we start on one.
The rim is bent or cracked
This is the absolute line. A structural fault never gets covered with a cosmetic finish, because the customer then drives away believing the wheel was checked and passed. It goes to a straightening specialist or it gets replaced, and we will not quote around it.
It is a machined or diamond-cut face
The concentric cut on that face comes off a wheel lathe and a lathe does not fit in a van. We will do the painted lip and barrel and say plainly what we have not done, rather than spraying silver over a cut finish.
Chrome or PVD plating
Plated finishes cannot be repaired on a driveway in any way that looks better than the damage. Straight no.
Corrosion running under the finish across the whole rim
Once alloy corrosion has spread beneath the coating over most of a wheel, a spot repair lifts again within months. That is a full strip and refinish off the car, and we will say so.
The frame above is built at the size and shape the real picture will be, and its caption names the photograph that belongs in it. A real site carries the company's own — their vans, their techs, their panels. None have been generated for this demonstration. There is no before-and-after frame here and there is not going to be one: in this trade that pair is the result, so an invented one would be a fabricated repair rather than a placeholder.
Text photographs to (656) 236-2374 and you will have an answer the same day — a written price, or a reason it is not ours. Or use the request form. What to photograph, and why →