Protecting kerbed wheel until repair

[donkmeister]

One of my wheels was kerbed this morning. Thankfully a fairly minor one but it has gone all the way through the powdercoat.

Mrs D will be sorting it for me, however I want to make sure I limit the damage as hopefully some sort of patch repair can be done (the wheels were refurbed last year by one of the PH-approved outfits). If salt starts getting in I doubt that will be possible.

Any thoughts? I was considering just giving it a good clean, dry, then spraying it with clear rattle can lacquer.

Also... Can powder coat be patch repaired? I have the benefit of being able to take it to the people who refurbed it with a known product and colour code. But, I don't know if powder coat works like that.

[DaveF-SkinnysAutos]

I see no one has replied. I’m not an expert on powder coating but I am a painter.

I dont think you can patch repair powder coat as it’s a static charge and then baked so I can’t see how that works on a small repair, but I stand to be corrected.

Personally I’d clean it, scuff it up and get a coat of epoxy primer over it, thats the rust prevention you need, once you’ve sealed the surface it doesn’t matter what you do cosmetically after that. You could blend in a bit of base paint colour matched to the powder coat then blend in a bit of lacquer, but you would need to scuff up the surrounding area to give it something to adhere to. Finally, you would need 2K lacquer, in an aerosol you need to pull the pin in the bottom and once the lacquer and hardener are mixed you have to use it and then bin it.

[GreenV8S]

I suggest you contact the people you'd have repair the wheel for advice about minimising the damage, but if it's gone through to the metal I suspect you'll find that they want to strip and refinish the wheel.

[ARH]

As suggested repairing powder coat with a patch repair is not possible. Doing a paint repair maybe possible. I would also be very careful about colour choice when getting powder coat to match the other wheels.

If its being powder coated no point in trying to look after it.

[drmotorsport]

I don't see any point in 'protecting' it. Assuming it's an alloy wheel it's not gonna rust, the damage is cosmetic and the repair would involve sanding back the paint and smoothing/filling the underlying metal before re coating.

[donkmeister]

Ah bks. I thought they might be able to do a patch repair so was trying to avoid stuff getting in and lifting the powder coat.

I may just leave it for now then - much as it annoys me it seems a bit overkill to have the whole wheel refurbed for a few inches of kerb rash that will probably happen again. Almost 18 months since I had them refurbished.

[paintman]

Pinch some of Mrs D's clear nail varnish? Or better yet see if she's got one of about the same colour.