Simply touch up rim damage with a touch-up pen

It almost always hits the front right rim and very often the curb is to blame when parking. curb bumps are an ugly thing for aluminum rims and, if they are professionally repaired, become an expensive thing. For this reason I deliberately chose the title “mending” – because a silver touch-up stick can work wonders in these cases! Of course, that doesn’t come close to a proper repair.

Roughly repair small to medium-sized rim damage

The only damage I bought with my Audi A3 was a damaged 17″ front right alloy wheel. When I picked up my A3, the Audi center had “painted over” the damage relatively well, after one Winter with the same rims and a few washes However, the silver paint was gone after a year. The appearance of the rim was not permanent, as the damage now also was (too) clearly visible from a distance of several meters. A new rim would have cost several hundred euros – just like a professional repair. Actually too much money, especially considering that I would be driving a different set of aluminum rims in winter anyway. I assumed that the Audi center had only worked temporarily for the delivery and ordered one without further ado simple touch-up pen for 12 euros in the color “Reflex Silver” because this color seemed to correspond best to my rims. At Amazon you can find the original VW paint pen for currently 12 euros. The touch-up sticks are available for all Audi, VW, Skoda and Seat paints and are also available in all car dealerships. As far as I know, there are no special paint sticks for Audi, VW, Seat or Skoda rims.

updated: This paint pen set (reflex silver) from Bekateq is just as good.

Had a relationship with all the curbs in the city clearly before my time – aluminum rim on the passenger side before touch-up treatment. Almost half of the rim was damaged in this way, fortunately only on the edge.

The procedure

Each paint stick set contains two paints: The color varnish, of course first is applied and the clear coat, which then seals everything. When repairing an aluminum rim, care must be taken to ensure that the damaged areas are completely clean are. The color varnish should then only as thin as possible be applied. Also, you should only work at a temperature of 15 degrees and not in extreme sunlight. A small piece of cardboard/paper is recommendedr between rim and tire to hold so that the latter does not get any ugly spots of paint. After the paint has dried (approx. 10-15 minutes), the clear coat is then applied just as thinly. From a distance of 1-2 meters, the rim damage is then hardly recognizable!

The result (top left and bottom) is impressive… From a distance of about 2 meters, the repair work can hardly be seen.

Especially since the rim on the passenger side could get hit by a curb again, I decided against an expensive repair, the result for a good 10 euros and about 5 minutes of work is impressive! For more serious damage, you might want to look at a repair kit that also comes with putty to touch up before painting.