Alloy Wheel Problem

sternjohn662200

Has anyone ever heard of this problem.

I took my car to tyre place and they have told me the reason my front drivers side tyre keeps going down is because when they remove the tyre from the wheel there is a build up of dust which is causing the wheel to go down. They cleaned this up for £30 and they fitted the same wheel back on the tyre. The wheel/tyre has been fine for months and this has started again.

Does anyone know a place I could get this repaired as I dont want to pay £30 every few months and I dont want to get rid of the alloy wheels as they are expensive chrome alloys.

Any help would be appreciated.

Conor_3

It's called corrosion and it's a common problem when the laquer on the rim fails. You need to get the alloy refurbished ideally which involves it being shot blasted, powder coated in a matching colour and laquered. It should be no more than £50 a rim, will last years and the wheels will look like new.

This is a company I've used in the past. If they've rims in stock, they send them out to you first, you then get your tyres swapped over and ring their couriers to arrange collection of your old rims free of charge. It's a little expensive but it means that you're not without your car for any more than the hour it takes to swap the tyres over.

http://www.pxwheels.com/

molerat

It won't be dust it will be oxidisation / corrosion. Cleaning it off will temporarily fix the problem. It needs cleaning off and treating for a long term fix. A decent tyre place should be able to do this or a specialist wheel re-finisher.

moonrakerz

To be honest alloys are a waste of money.

They suffer from all sorts of problems as detailed above plus they are very soft and are damaged easily by kerb scuffing and can be damaged beyond repair by just hitting a pothole.

Steels are much better bet - with some wheel trims from Halfords !

steveo3002

id be pricing up a new /good condition wheel to replace it, refurb wont be cheap

Conor_3

steveo3002 wrote: »

id be pricing up a new /good condition wheel to replace it, refurb wont be cheap

EH??? £50 a rim to refurbish them.

Wayne3765

sternjohn662200 wrote: »

Has anyone ever heard of this problem.

I took my car to tyre place and they have told me the reason my front drivers side tyre keeps going down is because when they remove the tyre from the wheel there is a build up of dust which is causing the wheel to go down. They cleaned this up for £30 and they fitted the same wheel back on the tyre. The wheel/tyre has been fine for months and this has started again.

Does anyone know a place I could get this repaired as I dont want to pay £30 every few months and I dont want to get rid of the alloy wheels as they are expensive chrome alloys.

Any help would be appreciated.

Was it Krap fit you took it to ?

I had the same problem on one of my alloys and it was sorted by a local tyre place for £5. they are cheap although there's a few around who'll do it for under £10.

They took the tyre off , wire brushed the rim inside and painted a sealer on it before replacing the tyre.

If I had any more problems with it I intended pricing a wheel from a scrap yard but thankfully it held ok until it needed changing.

P.s. A cheap fix could be to swap the wheel and tyre with the spare ( assuming your spare is an alloy too ) and keep a can of holts tyre weld ( about £4.50 in Wilkinson's ) in the boot to inflate and repair the leaky tyre if needed in an emergency.

anewman

I paid £15 to get a garage to take the tyre off sort it and refit and balance etc, so £30 seems a bit much. If you search around there will be cheaper places to do refurbs that don't cost much more than the £30 you paid for them to clean it up.

A few more wheels started doing it on my car (apparently they tend to do it after you get new tyres) so temporary solution for me was to buy a full set of alloys with decentish tyres off ebay for £50, and mix and match the best ones on the car - but would like to get a full set refurbed when I have plenty of spare cash. I am undecided on whether I want them powder coated white, black or anthracite - but definitely after something different than bog standard silver if I'm paying for it

Also, as I have 2 full sets I can just drive to the wheel refurber and drop the wheels off and drive away.

tomstickland

moonrakerz wrote: »

Steels are much better bet - with some wheel trims from Halfords !

I agree, apart from the trims. Steel wheels look great as bare steel in my onion.

Having said that, I got my salvaged alloy wheels repainted by a place in Birmingham called labtap or taplab, I'll look it up. Cost me £120 for 4.

http://www.lap-tab.co.uk/alloywheels.php

anewman

tomstickland wrote: »

Having said that, I got my salvaged alloy wheels repainted by a place in Birmingham called labtap or taplab, I'll look it up. Cost me £120 for 4.

http://www.lap-tab.co.uk/alloywheels.php

If only they'd quote £120 for a set of my 4 13" wheels, prices are always more than that, even with their 25% offers they persist on e-mailing me about. MSS in Leeds http://www.mssltd.org.uk/alloy.htm quoted a cheaper standard price for me than any of Lap-tab (The Wheel Specialists) special offers so I'll probably be using their services unless I can find cheaper.

To OP I found MSS by searching google with terms like (with variations) - Alloy refurbish leeds forums - this should hopefully bring up forum posts of people asking "where can I get my alloys refurbished in Leeds" along with answers

cyclonebri1

Steel wheels are more likely to cause leaks than alloys after a certain age IMHO.

They rust like !!!!!!y aroung the tyre bead and are often scapped as a result. It is more unusual to have this problem with alloys.