Okay, it happened. My other car is a 97 Toyota Land Cruiser with beefy meats and when I drive that for long periods, there is some adjustment when I get back into the Mini.

Like, say, parking. And curbs.

It's not hor-rible, but its gonna have to get fixed. And that's my question: fixable? Anyone have suggestions for a wheel refinishing ninja in Portland, OR?

 

It's definitely fixable. Mine has had curb rash since before I bought the MINI about a month ago. The VW dealer was going to hook me up with a refinishing job at their cost but it was still $100 per rim! I decided I would rather spend that money on other parts and wait on refinishing the rims. As I understand it, they just sand the portion with the rash down smooth and then reapply the paint and clear-coat. At least that is how they explained it to me. There was a pretty nifty DIY tutorial on here not too long ago that explained how to, obviously, do it yourself at home for pretty cheap. I'd be interested to see which path you go and how much it ends up costing!

 

I've grinded down and repaired 3 Mercedes wheels. Luckily, with my 16" wheels on the MINI the couple of times I've scraped the curb only scuffed the rubber sidewall.

Anyways, if you've got a dremel and a smooth grinding stone you can go grind the roughness smooth. Take the wheel off the car first obviously.

Once you have the big burrs ground off and everything looks smooth you can then place notecards in between the tire and rim. Makes for easy masking off for paint. Clean the wheel soap and water before hand and then spray with silver rattle can wheel paint.

It's pretty easy. Good Saturday afternoon job. Will it be perfect and totally unnoticeable, will the color silver exactly match the silver of the other wheels. Probably not but it shouldn't be noticeable to anyone other than yourself. But I don't know, you could make pretty good work out of it and no one might ever be able to to tell.