Wheel Repair

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What happens when you drive over a chainsaw T wrench Attached Images
Reply:Is this on your daily driver or a track car??If this is your daily driver im going to say You dont weld on rims for street use. Offroad or track use is another story, then its your own *** instead of the family minivan full of young children you slam into when your rim breaks from you doing your own repair.Last edited by smokin_dodge; 04-10-2012 at 08:05 PM.
Reply:Originally Posted by smokin_dodgeIs this on your daily driver or a track car??If this is your daily driver im going to say You dont weld on rims for street use. Offroad or track use is another story, then its your own *** instead of the family minivan full of young children you slam into when your rim breaks from you doing your own repair.
Reply:Originally Posted by dj55bThere's a lot of shops that fix rims like this or cracked/bent edges on a daily basis. The guys 2 doors down from my work do this all day long, and I do the ones they can't seem to be able to fix themselves. 90% of them are for street use cars. I've never heard or seen any issues with doing this.
Reply:Originally Posted by BrianCBeen doing this type of repair for years for many garages arounf here,never a problem.
Reply:Thanks for the comments guys. This one came off my cousins Chrysler Aspen. At the tune to $700.00 for a new one, this was a very nice alternative. The rim was very good quality it welded very nicely. Wheel has over 3k on it and still going strong. It actually balanced out better after I welded it, would love to be able to take credit for that but more like S**T luck.
Reply:I also weld repair aluminum wheels professionally, for a local wheel repair company.  For insurance purposes however, they will only take on (and pass to me) weld repairs to the portion of the wheel that outside of the safety bead (that's the raised bead in the rim that is just about 1/2" towards the center of the wheel from the "lip".  Lots of cracked lip repairs, and occasionally a lip reconstruction.  I guess I've done some cosmetic touch-up or two on the spoke before though.  But anyhow, so this one would have been a "reject" (but I do believe there are other wheel repair guys who would do it, probably the more shady type.)Not saying I wouldn't do it just like you did if it were my own, though.  Looks like it worked out just fine.Welding the triple chrome plated wheels is the worst.  All those coatings need to come off to get a good weld, and that means removing significant thickness.The best are the racing wheels that are "bare aluminum", because then you don't need to remove any paint.The wheel repair company I weld for has a jig to accurately measure run-out, and they bend the wheels as needed to make them run true after I weld them.  Then of course they are really skilled at blending and refinishing (as most aluminum wheels are painted, actually.)