Some idiot (me) backed the HHR up and came in contact with the curbing in a parking lot.

Now I have a couple of fairly hefty scratches on one of the spokes on my aluminum rim (the regular aluminum rims that come with the 1LT model)

Can this be buffed to smooth it out?

 

You can try...depends on how bad the scratch is. Can't hurt to try.

 

Keep us posted if you find anything that works, I also need to do this at sometime.

 

When I was in the wheel and tire business we used a company called transwheel to do our refinishing. They do excellent work and have an exchange program also. http://www.transwheel.com/
The other thing you could do is ask a local bodyshop who they use to repair/refinish the wheels for their customers cars, because most of the time when a wheel is damaged the insurance companies will not pay for a new wheel but instead will have it refinished. Last but not least, look around you can usually find single wheels on sites like Ebay (usually around $100.00us) or do a google on OEM wheels and you will find plenty of places that will have what you need. Buy another wheel and keep the scratched one as a spare in case you really trash one, or for a full sized spare instead of the donut...Hope this helps......Regards

 

try the buff ball on it.....

 

That would just shread against scraped aluminum.

If they are not too deep, you could try a dremel and ground it smooth again. Just be careful, you don't want to take too much off the lip. You will also remove the clearcoat doing this.