What are these spots on these custom chrome wheels?

My father has these custom chrome wheels on his truck. Not sure if somewhere he took it to get washed messed up the wheels or if they are rusting. These spots feel slightly rough to the touch. Could something be put on these wheels to clear them up?

 

had this happen to an old set of truck rims i had, interested in what would cure this as well....

 

Chrome Herpes.

 

What are you using to clean them? Carwash sometimes use an acid-based cleaner for wheels, if the chrome is compromised it will permeate the finish and cause raised surfaces like that

 

Its the beginning of the end for those wheels, I can speak from experience they only get worse from here. In my case it was road salt and sand

 

^^^^ that and the quality of the initial chrome job.

 

Might be pitting. Might have been washed with a acid based cleaner and not rinsed thoroughly. My cobra rims are like that on my car. It hurts to see them that way

 

Yup; looks like pitting to me.

Are these subjected to salt/brine?

 

Yea it's pitting. Although chrome is a very hard coating it can be sensitive to some things like salt and acids. They will most likely need to be recoated.

 

Well salt would explain why mine went bad, no matter how I tried to clean or polish them they just got worse and worse until one day I couldn't look at them any more...bye bye rims.

 

I've only washed this truck 4 times. Using on some Meguiar's car wash soap. No telling where he gets it washed when I'm not able to wash it for him.

 

Well that could be the problem. It does work on the oil field business and sometimes parks his truck at work. The company he works for does haul brine water. Not sure if he went through some if the rims were in contact with that brine water there or not. We do live in South Texas. Not sure where he would go through any salt around here.

 

Thats not good to hear. I was hoping to save the rims with some cleaner and polish. There rims are nice and are only over a year old.

 

It wouldn't hurt to try Meg's Wheel Brightner. I had a customer with stains from a parking garage leaking some sort of concrete mixture and Wheel Brightner got it off with no effort.

 

There's a place in town that specializes in plating if you end up going that route.

 

They look pitted. The corrosive environment we live in here on the Gulf coast is horrible for chrome wheels. I don't think that there's too much that could be done to save them. Perhaps get them re-chromed?