Wheel Straightening?

  • Thread starter Thread starter poffer
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I have experienced porosity related air leakage problems on a repaired car mag wheel. 
The problem surfaced about six months after the repair. 
The wheel had been resprayed, so the hole/bubble that caused the leak was not initially evident.
This was with a tubeless tire.
Perhaps something to carefully check for if welding is involved.
 
I won't weld wheels, not that I can't I just won't. I have been coded for aluminium TiG welding so ability is not the issue. Anyone that does weld wheels is just having a go in my opinion, it might be alright it might not. OK on car wheels and I dare say there is hundreds if not thousands of mended wheels rolling around out there just fine but without fully normalising then re-heat treating the wheel after welding the rim is not of consistant strength all the way round. Not so bad if it fails on a car I suppose, you have three others, not so good on a bike.
  Pete that wheel of yours would come straight with a good whump from a hide mallet, would not even bother to remove the tyre.


  Keith
 
Rims are much easier to repair than you may think.
I filled the dent on this rim with liquid metal, put a tubeless tire on, had no trouble since. :D :D :D
 

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Ludi Boba said:
Rims are much easier to repair than you may think.
I filled the dent on this rim with liquid metal, put a tubeless tire on, had no trouble since. :D :D :D
Click to expand...
Please do not take me seriously here. Beer hour came early today.
 
I was thinking what a tosser, surely with his skill he used Carbon Fibre  :LOL:
 
I am with Keith on this one,and I never was any good at alloy welding (sheet yes but not castings) and agree with everything that he says, but also for distortion and stress cracking that he doesnt say so much about, the cast alloy Laverda wheel may well be repairabvle by welding, but with a large flimsy open item such as this, if you were to weld a cracked spoke back to a rim edge (for instance) that would be oposite a "gap" between  the spokes  and 18 inches or so apart which would distort or even crack somewhere else on cooling, unless you had a cooker big enough to preheat the whole rim at least to 60% of melting point and hold it there while you welded, then cooled under control, and as Keith says provide correct heat treatment for tempering/hardness levels,
so if welding is needed, bin it.
CLEM
 
laverdakeith said:
  Pete that wheel of yours would come straight with a good whump from a hide mallet, would not even bother to remove the tyre.

   Keith
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Hi Keith, now that's interesting - I have a double sided hide/copper hammer in the workshop. I there any risk if it's done by the hamfisted (me  :D )?

Tyre removal not an issue - it's ancient. Worth leaving on whilst the wheel is hit so I can then rest the wheel on the floor?.

cheers

Pete
 
A bit of a tangent to straightening or welding, but I have a modified rear wheel on my Kawasaki sidecar outfit.

The original Kawasaki 7-spoke alloy wheel had the rim cut off the spokes, so what was left was a kind of 7-pointed star. Then a steel car rim (so I could use square profile car tyres) was grafted onto the spokes. The fixing method to attach the rim was by drilling and tapping M6 holes radially through the rim into the ends of the sawn-off alloy spokes, and bolting the rim on with one bolt per spoke. I was a little concerned at first that the wheel was held together with just 7 x M6 bolts. But it has stayed put for about 10 years now despite all the abuse I've thrown at it - masses of lateral loading in corners, flying the sidecar in the air, high speeds, towing heavy trailers and bashing it over rough roads. I've stopped worying about it now that my best attempts to break it have failed miserably.

I'm not quite sure what point I'm trying to make. I think it's that wheels in general may be a lot stronger than they look. Check out some of the spindly alloy wheels on modern superbikes. They look like they'd collapse at the first bump.

The thin web Laverda wheels appear to be an exception (made of butter), which would explain why the factory quickly superceded them with the thick web ones.

Cheers,
Cam
 
Dellortoman said:
The thin web Laverda wheels appear to be an exception (made of butter), which would explain why the factory quickly superceded them with the thick web ones.

Cheers,
Cam
Click to expand...

Hi Cam,

Not sure the thin webs are any softer (well, maybe a bit), but the key difference on the thick webs seems to be the double edge with the curved area in-between. Compared to the simple shoulder on the thin webs, you can see why it would be so much stronger.

Dug out the hide hammer - yet to pluck up the courage to give the wheel a belt  ::)  Not in any hurry, so will continue to glare at the wheel for a few days and see if that removes the dent  :P

Pete

 
Pete, go for it bud!
If it works I may try doing it to mine.
If it doesn't, then we'll just laugh at you!  :D :D :P :-*
 
Ease of manufacture? Cost? 'Modern look' (back in the day).
Wire wheels looked so YESTERDAY once alloy wheels took hold.
 
There's an outfit over here that will widen cast alloy bike wheels.  Although they specialize in Yamaha V-max crap, they will do others.  The rim is machined off on both sides, leaving the centre part connected to the spokes.  Spun alloy rim "halves" are then welded to either side of what remains of the original wheel.  Just about any width or centre off-set is possible, was very popular with the custom gang before the factories started supplying 6"+ wheels.  The procedure is even T?V-approved!  Might be an option to get a damaged Laverda rim going again while at the same time subtly widening it to take advantage of wider modern tyres.  Isn't cheap though, prices start at ?480/wheel.

http://www.deget.de/felgen.htm

piet
 
Grant said:
Pete, go for it bud!
If it works I may try doing it to mine.
If it doesn't, then we'll just laugh at you!  :D :D :P :-*
Click to expand...

:D :D :D

After reading that, I am beginning to wonder if Keith was just having a laugh.  :P
 
No I'm not having a laugh Pete and in response to your earlier post there is every risk you will fuck it all up by being ham fisted  ;). Trick is to hit it in exactly the right spot with exactly the right amount of force, leaving the tyre on will support the rim, a good well placed blow will push it back to where it should be, whether you feel confident/competent enough to do it or not is entirely up to you.


    Keith
 
laverdakeith said:
No I'm not having a laugh Pete and in response to your earlier post there is every risk you will fuck it all up by being ham fisted  ;). Trick is to hit it in exactly the right spot with exactly the right amount of force, leaving the tyre on will support the rim, a good well placed blow will push it back to where it should be, whether you feel confident/competent enough to do it or not is entirely up to you.


    Keith
Click to expand...

Thanks Keith,

Hmmm? ?60 and it's a safe fix, big hammer and it's a risk.  Given the chance of getting another thin web front wheel, think I will have to go with the safe option. Really appreciate the suggestion though. I am so glad I work with wood - so much easier to understand....  ;)

Cheers Pete
 
Go on Pete, have a bash at it. You know you want to. So does the hide hammer - it's beckoning you ...
You'd have to hit it bloody hard to break the rim. Start off with mediocre whallops and when that does nothing, swing a bit harder. Think of the satisfaction of knowing you did it yourself, and saving £60 into the bargain.

PS: As an indication of how hard to hit it, I tried to fix a very similar looking dent with a rubber mallet. I gave it a few hard hits - didn't do a thing. So I hit it harder - still didn't do anything to the rim but busted the wooden handle of the mallet. So there's a starting point for you - hit it harder than that! 


 
for fucks sake, its a pissy little dent, give it to the guy to "roll" it and itll cost you 60 quid, or  send it to Keith and he'll belt it for 60 quid, that little dent is nothing to some of the shit ive had "fixed", no one i know in Australia will weld motorcycle wheels, theres only a select few that will even straighten them, easy fix, go polish a few more chairs Pete  ;)
 
Here's the crack in my wheel at the spoke base. I would have said repairable but you could write what I know about repairing wheels on the back of a stamp:

normal_thinweb_012.jpg


A little difficult to spot at first but you can see it starting on the left side of the base of the spoke where it joins the rim. The rim had taken a bash in that area.
 
hi  take a pattern from a good section of wheel .make a former and hit the former not the wheel, ;)  then sell the former :P regards andy
 
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