Sooo, I go to the tyre shop to replace the worn, hardened rear Dunlops with a pair of Sumitomos. Manager comes into the waiting room with a long face and tells me the tech has something to show me. The "oh crap, how much will this cost" sign comes on in my head. He shows me a balanced Senta with a new Sumitomo. Then he spins it. Good grief! The inside of the rim is bent out of round. You cannot see any damage with the naked eye, no scuffs or dings, but it is WAY out of true.

The guys at the shop are very doubtful that it can be straightened safely. Anybody here ever had it done successfully? The car rides better than with the Dunlops, but you can still feel a vibration from the back. At least now I know why.

Update 12/16

Went to the local Alloy Wheel Repair Specialist (AWRS) guy on Wednesday. I was not allowed to see how he did it, but in about 25 minutes I had a straight wheel. "Popped right back out, Sir". Even driving up to the tyre shop to get a rebalance I could tell it was better.

Tyre shop guys looked a bit skeptical when I told them it was fixed, but even the picky high-end tech came back looking impressed. Now I have to find the best tyre pressures to run.

Why won't the board software show my new title on the forum listing?

 

Depending on the extent of the damage, it is possible to repair and true an out-of-round alloy rim. But will the repaired rim be as structurally sound and as strong as a new Senta rim? Hard to say; depends on how well the repair was done. Since your wheel is out of round only on the inside, it may be fairly simple to heat it up and repair the bead to true round. Keep in mind that potholes are potential disasters even to to brand new 20" rims with super low profile tires, particularly if the hit is in the weak spot in between the spokes. Very little tire/air volume to absorb the impact.

Not knowing where you are located (Lost Wages? = Las Vegas?) makes it difficult to recommend a rim repair shop, so I suggest you contact the used car dept. managers of several luxury car dealers in your area and ask them who they use. Dealers usually refurbish the rims on their high-end used cars - a small investment with a big return. You can also Google "alloy wheel repair" plus your city to get local listings. Retail cost typically runs anywhere from $100 to $175 per wheel; dealers pay roughly half that amount. There are lots of cars on the road with remanufactured rims.

You have to compare the cost to repair your wheel to the cost of a brand new OEM Senta wheel; fronts are around $1000 each and rears are around $1100 each from a Jaguar dealer. There is a current eBay listing for a "remanufactured" front Senta wheel (I realize you need a rear wheel) for $550.

I would try the alloy repair. Just my . Good luck!

 

Hi, Stuart. Yes, you have rumbled my location and the local searches show there to be a VERY limited number of folk who even claim to do wheel repairs. I shall call the dealer on Monday and see what they say. I also have a guy at work who is heavily into custom cars so he may have a lead, as may the local non-dealer Jag mechanic.

Some ferreting around the web has revealed that the Sentas tend to bend in the location I described when they do get crunched by a pothole or kerb. It seems odd to me that we can see no real trauma from an edge anywhere on the wheel. The car came from SoCal near the I-10. If it was driven on that road too often I can see how it got a bent rim. The I-10 is really a strip peeled from the surface of the Moon. When they got it down here they stretched it out, added the divider and called it an Interstate.

 

These cars have a huge amount of offset in the wheels. They can be bent hitting a speed bump in a parking lot too fast. My car came to me with 2 bent front wheels. The local bent wheel service fixed em fast and cheep in a local Wal-Mart parking lot. It's really no big deal, if like the man said, depending on the damage. There are several national franchise operations that specialise in this service.
Kudos to your tire shop for finding the problem and calling it to your attention. Imagine some drone sending you on your way with new tires on bent wheels?

 

I'll add that I recently bent both the passenger front and back wheels after being forced onto the shoulder and hitting a very deep hole surrounded by pavement. Bent both wheels, the front one severely.

I had both straitened for $135 each, and they are like new. They are as structurally sound as new - I have received a guarantee to this effect.

 

The 2 guys I used came to me in a mobile service truck. Different companies but same franchise. They used a blow torch and a hydraulic ram/press. Less than an hour in both cases.

Don't be intimidated. This is not rocket science. Dealers use them regularly and that goes for wheel refinishing too. Can't speak to the refinishing aspect of these mobile companies but they did tell me they need the tire dismounted and left overnight. Perhaps we have some folks who can testify re wheel refinishers?

 

I have been driving on my 20" Sentas for 5 years now and have had them all straightened twice. because of the width and the low profiles these wheels go out of round very easily. I have them checked and fixed every second tire change as a maintenance issue. The last time I had them fixed it solved a problem I had with the adaptive cruise control that the dealer could not fix!

Great to see I can get something done in NZ cheaper than the USA! My cost to refurbish, paint and straighten is $60 per wheel and is done over night. The paint is still a little soft the next day but with careful treatment all is good. Why paint you ask... Well my wife still doesn't know where the curb is!

 

There is a company here in Huntsville Alabama called Wheel Fix It. I had a Senta that was bent and had a crack in it. They did the repair but did not do any paint work since it was on the inside lip.

 

Ker bump!

 

Seeing as the board does not allow me to add "Update" or "Fixed" to the title of my original thread, I have to start a new post to give you the good news.

Went to the local Alloy Wheel Repair Specialist (AWRS) guy on Wednesday. I was not allowed to see how he did it, but in about 25 minutes I had a straight wheel. "Popped right back out, Sir". Even driving up to the tyre shop to get a rebalance I could tell it was better.

Tyre shop guys looked a bit skeptical when I told them it was fixed, but even the picky high-end tech came back looking impressed. Now I have to find the best tyre pressures to run. I have Hankooks on the front and Sumitomos on the back. Any thoughts?

 

bad i dea with two diffrent type of tires on the car u should have all 4 the same so u are running the same tires with the same compound of rubber combination and air presure reccomendation

 

I agree with what you say up to a point. I could have put a pair of Hankooks on the back to match those on the front, but the Sumitomos got such a better review for ride and low road noise, I had to have them. I cannot detect any detriment to the handling so I am happy.

As for the tyre pressures, my tech here is EXTREMELY skeptical of the Jaguar recommended basic pressures of 30 front and 33 rear. He showed me that the rears that came off the car had almost like a burn mark all the way around the bead area suggesting that the tyres were moving too much at that point. Whether this is up and down movement and excessive flex or the rims turning inside the tyre I cannot say.

He claims that this is a common thing he sees with high end cars (Ferraris, Lambos, Masers etc.) with huge tyres run at the manufacturers recommended pressures. Shades of Ford and the Explorer again. He cranked in another 8psi in each tyre and suggested I see how it ran. Oddly enough, it affected the ride less than I expected. I backed 3psi back out because of certain granular roads here and I am pretty close to calling those my new pressures.

 

Well -- if you want to get a little more detailed and if you have one of those IR temperature sensors, go out and drive the car for a bit getting the tires up to temperature. Don't go all aggressive backroady, but just how you would normally. then take the surface temperature of one tire *very quickly* at the outside, middle, and inside of the tire tread surface. If the pressure is 'right' there will be little variation in temperature between all 3. By *very quickly*, I mean within 30 to 60 seconds of getting out of the car. They cool down fast.

 

Rahtok, this sounds like fun. It means i get to drive my car, it's scientific, and it gives me the excuse to buy a new toy, the IR sensor.

 

This is something I've used at the track with very limited success, and stopped monitoring a few years ago. I remember talking to a race team engineer who said they could never get anywhere near even temps, and didn't rely on this method for determining ideal pressures. That was under motorsports conditions, but might lend some insight for street use...or not.

If the factory alignment has any negative camber the inside face of the tread would be expected to be warmer than the middle or outside, and it's also possible that any given tire might perform best at pressures that don't yield fairly even temps. Tire manufacturer's might provide some info for their street tires, although that would be so vehicle and suspension design dependant that they might not even try to.

Too bad tires can't be rotated and flipped like in the past. You can expect uneven tire wear these days...and embrace it in the name of performance!

Bruce

 

Yeah -- agreed Bruce -- it's a little tricky. I've done it a few times with the Z at autoX and track events. I don't know how much camber our XKRs are set up with, nor how the tires wear -- tho I suspect those rear tires are going to go F A S T. 285s are *way* too small for the HP rating. lol. All I know is my tires are out of round, and I don't have the heart to tell my wife I need another 1300 bucks for tires. /chuckle

 

Are you sure they are out of round and not just turned to hockey pucks? The ride at the back on my XKR improved drastically when I tossed the worn Dunlops. You could barely get a fingernail into them they were so hard.

Maybe it is a SW desert thing. My tyre guy warned me off the Michelin Pilots because "I don't want to have to explain why your $1300 tyres are dead from dry rot in 18 months". He had just gone through this with an irate porsche owner. My coworker had the Continentals on his Mercedes go hard after about a year. Lots of tread left, but the increase in road noise and the knobbly ride has him well PO'd.

 

It's possible I suppose -- the car came from Texas. But I know they're out of round as well because I took them to a little AutoX shop nearby to have them balanced. They were out by about half an ounce each, but he showed me that the wheels were oblong -- he thought it justification for hooning the hell out of the tread! /chuckle

 

2011 Overland Summit with the 20" bright polished alluminum wheels... Wife just curbed the passenger side rim pretty good. I searched for and didn't find much help with tips on repairs. I was able to find several sites that discussed how to repair your rim if they are painted, but I don't think using paint on these rims would work very well. Anyone have any advice or knowledge on repairing a scratched (gouged more like it) rim? Should I scratch (no pun intended) the idea of DIY repair and just take it to a profession? Any ideas welcomed! Thanks!

 

Professional repair is the only sure-fire way to make it look original again. Costs can be fairly modest depending upon the wheel finish and the amount of damage.

Richard