I stuck my truck today at the hunting lease. When I was washing it off, I noticed that my wheels got scratched from spinning in the mud. Is there any way to polish these out or get rid of them somehow. Hopefully, I didn't ruin the wheels. Two of them are this way.

 

Pictures would really help, but information on what wheels you have would help too. Remember, F-150's come with a number of different factory wheel styles and finishes. How to solve your problem depends on which wheels you have.

 

I have the factory 20" wheels. They are not the chrome ones. They look similar to the wheels on the King Ranch models.

 

OK, so what you have are clear coated aluminum wheels. The big thing to look for here is how deeply (if at all) you penetrated the clear coat. If you didn't go all the way through, some light buffing might do the trick. Remember, clear coat is just like paint! If you get too crazy, you'll end up moving straight to the next level.

If you went through the clear coat, all you can do is see a professional body shop. They'll have to see what kind of paint and / or machining will be required to bring them back. I've actually seen factory aluminum wheels scarred deeply enough where they had to take a light face cut on the machined sections to get them looking right before re-clear coating them.

By the way, depending on where you live, breaks in the clear coat can cause some really ugly long term damage. Aluminum doesn't "rust", but it does oxidize. The clear coat is what prevents that from happening. Once it starts, it creeps right under the clear coat and looks quite ugly. Good luck!

 

I can vouch for this one. My rims got scrached and just like u said, started to oxidize and turn blackish color and the clear in now flaking off...very ugly to say the least.

 

hmm, sounds like around the holes in my wheels the clearcoat is fading.....

 

Actually, just due to the way paint builds in thickness (or DOESN"T build), there are areas on your wheels that will have a thicker clear coat. Sharp corners - like around holes - tend to have a very thin coating thickness. This leaves them very prone to being starting places for trouble. One also has to be very careful when handling clear coated wheels because there are many ways you can compromise the coating. The top two on my list are pounding on (or taking off) wheel weights and dropping lug nuts while taking them off. Both can compromise the coating - leading to the creeping crud we call oxidation.