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OT-Alloy wheel repair

Plus, probably sold to an unsuspecting customer. I'm sure the wheel didn't suffer any compromising weakness from hot and cold working the alloy.
 
I wouldn't want that wheel but he does seem to have a real technique. There is a guy in Tucson who straightens alloy wheels and has done some for my wife's Saab. He uses heat and a press. He told me that most are done with a heqat gun and powder coat is intact. He said the metal wants to go back, just needs a little help. He wont touch a cracked or welded wheel.
 
That is a fairly well designed press they used for schmushing the wheel back into shape. I'd be more impressed if they showed a finished wheel and not alluded to the final finishing steps. But is it all safe? Of course it is - for Ruskies, lol.
 
In the grand scheme of things, car wheels are pretty low stressed items. The thing's being turned around by a bit of 7/8" steel, and only restraining a ton and a half of metal with a 40% COF. That isn't much loading at all until you hit the granite kerb stone. Then they deform, as shown. Repairs like that won't change their capabilities to any significant extent.

I would have liked to see the welding though...
 
It's interesting that all the force of the press on the wheel is anchored by the 5 lug pattern. I woulda thought they would support out at the rim, opposite of where the pressing is taking place.
 
My Miltronics lathe came from a wheel repair company in Detroit. It was set up with a Renishaw probe to develop the program to machine the wheel. Everyone at the outfit was a Russian immigrant. They must be making money at it, they had just bought several new lathes. They had a boileroom with about 10 salesmen on the phone selling mostly to bodyshops as I was told.
 
Mark Rand said:
In the grand scheme of things, car wheels are pretty low stressed items. The thing's being turned around by a bit of 7/8" steel, and only restraining a ton and a half of metal with a 40% COF. That isn't much loading at all until you hit the granite kerb stone. Then they deform, as shown. Repairs like that won't change their capabilities to any significant extent.

I would have liked to see the welding though...
Click to expand...

Huh ?

Take a sharp turn (like to avoid a situation) and have that crack come off, the
tire immediately becomes "not round", and just a "decorative decal" and all steering goes right out the winder.

Yup, no stress at all.....
 
I dunno. When you consider all the really crappy Chinese made wheels on the market now and (generally) you don't see them falling apart it makes a good argument that the stresses a wheel sees are not 'astronomical' as compared to the available room for design.

Will a wheel break when you hit a curb at 45MPH? Yes. Not many will survive unscathed. But do they break under normal driving/turning conditions? Not so much.
 
Talk about screwing around! If I was going to weld it anyways, I'd just bend an arc of good aluminum, cut a notch out of the rim and weld in the new piece and machine it.
 
I'm no Russian speaker, but I'm pretty sure that in the beginning of the video at the part where he pointed to the damage, I heard the Russki version of "Well, there's your problem!" Lol. I wouldn't put that wheel back on a car I was going to drive hard or at higher speeds personally. I refused an insurance repair for an aluminum wheel that got bent on my M3 years ago. They said fine but you'll need to pay the difference. I did, no qualms.
 
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