Can you D.I.Y a dent in rim?


Hit a sidewalk, hub cap came flying off and i have been driving on it for 50 miles now and havent lost tire pressure yet. Could i torch it and knock it back into place?

Don’t torch it, that could weaken the metal. Just knock it back into shape with a BFH. That’s the way most shops do it unless it gets bad enough to loose air. Then there are specialty shops that can run the rim through a machine that reforms the lip.

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When you consider the many places where you don’t want a tire to fail why would you not want to replace the wheel .

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The auto recycling yard is your friend. They’ll even accept the bad one for scrap.

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Looking at the picture again, I noticed something I didn’t see the first time. It looks like the bead of the rim maybe distorted. The lip does not seal the tire, it only acts like a backstop for the tires bead. The next section of the rim, the horizontal bead section that the tires bead actually seals against may be slightly out of round. I can’t be absolutely sure from the picture.

If the bead is out of round at all, then the tire should be removed and the rim ran through a roll forming machine to reshape the bead and the lip, or the whole wheel should be replaced. If the bead is still perfectly round (within specs), then the lip can be pounded back in shape with a big hammer.

If the bead is out of round, you should feel some vibration at speed, a bit like an out of balance tire.

you’ve done a good but of damage to that wheel. I would be very weary of that tire seeing how bent the rim is. the tire took quite a whollop, too.

If this were my car- I would replace both.

The beading still looks in tact but it is hard to tell me for me as well. Havent felt a wobble at high speeds rather more when slowing down. Thanks for the suggestion! Im going to have it looked at

Its kinda lookin that way eddo

Because i am cheap bastard but you might be right

I’d roll the vehicle so the dents are at the bottom of the tire, and knock the dents out with a BFH.

Tester

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OP
Make sure that You hit the rim, not the tire. If You hit only the tire, You could be in for a nasty and painfull surprice.
Well, maybe Your partner will think that it will be an improvement of Your looks with a big horn in Your forehead. :grin:

I’d use a crowbar and a BFH as long as the bead is not out of round.

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I would be more concerned about the tire than the rim. A few years back my wife ran over some debris with her 2006 Sienna with 215/60R15 tires. The rim had a small dent (not as bad as yours) and the tire looked fine. I used a small sledge hammer to remove most of the dent. About a week later a bubble appeared in the tire sidewall at the dent. I kept the rim but I replaced the tire. If I was you I would replace the rim (junkyard) and the tire to be on the safe side.

Ed B.

Well, a bubble will appear or it will not appear… something to be carefully watched.
It is good it happened to external rim, not internal one.
I had an incident of smaller damage on the internal side, which eventually resulted in a bubble and I had to replace tire, but it was hard to spot why car went into bump-dump-bump mode on one side.

Its a cheap steel wheel… Go to a salvage yard and find a new one for your vehicle. Avoid any and all attempts at repairing it…there is just no reason to try, not when they are available easily and affordably.

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One more for the road.YCFS.

I use a long pipe wrench to slowly work the metal into shape. Put the jaws against the edge of the rim and apply downward pressure.

That sounds like a project I would enjoy, too, but I would probably use that as a spare wheel only. A good one from an auto recycler, or even new, is not expensive.

And we are talking steel, not alloy, right? Alloys are far more likely to break under stresses that will bend steel.