Brake cleaner and painted wheels

[Billyboy]

1998 Yellow Firestorm - Cleaned the disk bobbins on the front wheel and the calipers, thought I had cleaned up the areas well and put the cover over the bike. Just removed this and have found, what I assume was the brake cleaner, has over the next few days dripped out of the bobbins onto the wheel rim and where this dripped and ran I now I have a pale "bloom" discolouring the standard metallic black / grey look wheel finish, to both sides of the rim. The surface is not loose or bubbled, just a different blotchy patchy pale colour. I am sure this must have happened to others before, so was hoping that through the forum I might ask for any advice / wisdom on what my options might now be please.

[MacV2]

Yeah brake cleaner can do that to paint.

Just try whatever polish you have to hand...

Maybe clean the area first with WD-40 then polish.

If that fails then try T-cut or other cutting compound...

However doing that one area you may end up having to do the whole wheel to match the patch...

[Billyboy]

Thank you for the quick post, will give it a go, fingers crossed

[popkat]

brake cleaner wouldn't have come out over a few days, it evaporates in less than half hour (usually just a few minutes), if you get it on unpainted plastics you can bring the finish back with silicone spray, on your wheels a light t-cut should sort it out then some polish.
I use brake cleaner a lot and wipe it off almost straight away.


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[Billyboy]

The staining was in runs so I thought the "gunk" from the cleaned bobbins had run out, but thinking about it you are correct in that it does evaporate very quickly. Possibly the damage was caused but came to light a bit later. Thank you for the advice, I have found some black T cut and polish at Halfords that I am hopeful will do the trick, will get some over the weekend and try it, so fingers crossed.