Bent Alloys

Righty it happens to us all. The nice alloy you have takes a hefty bang. Tyre is now flat.

It can happen on a kerb, pothole or like my 17's motorway roadwork seams.

If you can get the council to buy you a new rim and tyre but sometimes its your own fault and you have to sort it.

Now you can either bin the wheel and go buy a new one or a new set. Or you can repair it.

If the rim is cracked then its bin fodder, it is not safe to be used as anything except a nice garden ornament.

However if its just bent and not cracked then there is hope.

Our example for this article is a 15 inch 5 spoke borbet wheel. Here is a picture of the damage



The wheel has bent away that much there is a gap you can get your finger into between the tyre and rim.

here it is again from another angle



Ideally you would remove the tyre to do this but in some cases especially on the inside of a wheel you can keep the tyre on.

You need a good lump hammer, a normal claw hammer and a blow torch.

Righty get the blowtorch and heat up the area. You need to heat up quite a large area as the dent is always larger than you think.

Heat it up then you need hammer out the damage.

The secret here is to go easy. Don't try and bang it straight in 1 go, it will crack. 3/4 hammer blows get back on the blow torch for a bit. Then again start hammering again.

You will probably find it will only go so far.This is when you need to tap in the edge of the rim as thats what will be holding it out of shape. Tap the edge in then go back to the main hoop.

The rim will start taking shape again



its not there yet but close



A bit more heating and tapping the top and side gets it back to shape



It will go back to nearly perfect if you take your time.

It should stick out either, it should look ok like this



Its not pretty but its hidden and its back in shape.

That was all I had to do with that rim. I pumped it up listened for leaks found none so then put it under load, I fitted it to the white chamade to make sure it was still ok under load



It was fine.

I can't tell you enough to take it slowly, also if the rim is cracked or you suspect it may be scrape all the paint away and closely inspect it. If its cracked and you try to repair it, assuming it doesn't split when you hammer it then it will when your hurtling along the motorway!

Just the other day I split one of my 17's. I thought 1 more bang before getting the blow torch on it, that 1 more bang cracked it. I had spent a good 30 minutes on it and it was going very well. But then a bit of impatience resulted in a cracked rim.

if you don't feel up to the task most places will do a repair for 10 - 30 pounds. Some places will not touch it others may crack the wheel and still charge you.