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Wheel Repair and Straightening

Don't get bent out of shape

For as long as there have been wheels on automobiles, there have also been nefarious forces at work, trying to dent, scrape, bend and damage them. You and your vehicle face many obstacles on the road. Sometimes, despite your best efforts to avoid them, these obstacles will present themselves as unexpected dents, dings and scuffs. A slam, clunk or crack often comes more as an unexpected surprise than anything even remotely anticipated.

Slam Dunk

To name a few of the usual suspects—potholes, chuckholes, seemingly invisible curbing, separated truck tire treads, flotsam and jetsam leftover from someone's move across town—all of these things can cause damage to those things that keep your vehicle rolling smoothly down the road: your wheels. While curb-scraping a plastic hubcap cover on a steel wheel may not bring on any "Why me?" cries, that same scrape on a set of polished or painted aluminum wheels might ruin your entire day. Worse, if a wheel lip or the wheel itself gets bent or damaged, you may suddenly find yourself standing face to face with dealer prices for OEM replacement wheels. Or will you?

All Is Not Lost

The good news is that even seemingly irreparable wheels can be fixed up to be good as new. For nearly as long as there have been wheels on cars, there have been people around who have made it their business to get things back into the round. Adopting skills and craftsmanship that have been passed on from one generation to the next, the skilled wheel repairman uses methods both old and new to reverse any damage caused to wheels. From a common curb scrape to complete reconstruction and restoration of one-off wheel rarities, even the most hopeless looking hoops can be fixed to be rolling along and looking good again in virtually no time.

Check It Out

Various tools and fixtures, combined with old-style metal forming skills, reverse the many forces that may have put that wheel out of the round in the first place. Remember that the visible damage caused by a chuckhole or unseen curb may be just the tip of the iceberg. If one or more of your wheels take a hit, make sure to get them all checked out. The vibrations from an out-of-round or out-of-true wheel can wreak mechanical havoc on everything connected to it.

A special thanks goes out to Pico Wheel Service in North Hollywood, California, for an inside look at how wheel repair is done.