Curb rash
is not
permanent.
Mobile alloy wheel repair and custom caliper paint. The whole shop arrives in the van, parks in your driveway, and leaves when the wheels are back on the car.
- Where we work
- Your driveway
- Most repairs
- Done on site
- Wheel sizes
- 15″ – 24″
The same wheel
One wheel, photographed before and after. The lip had been chewed back to bare metal most of the way round, the clear coat was lifting in sheets and the face was gouged. It was machined true, rebuilt, recoated and put back on the car with the calipers repainted while we were in there.
Drag the handle across to compare them. Nobody looks at a car and notices a good wheel — they notice a bad one. That is the whole job.
Damage we take on
Most wheels that look ruined are not. Aluminium is forgiving if it is worked properly. Here is what we see every week, and all of it gets handled at your address rather than at a shop.
Curb rash and scraping
The most common job — usually done in one visitThe outer lip gets chewed down to bare metal against a curb or a parking block. We machine the lip back to a true circle, rebuild any material that is missing, and refinish the face so the repair does not sit as a bright patch against the rest of the wheel.
Bent lips and buckled barrels
Straightened on site with the wheel off the carA bend shows up as a steering wheel shimmy at highway speed or a tyre that will not hold pressure. We mount the wheel on a straightening bench, measure the runout, then bring the metal back with a hydraulic ram and controlled heat rather than hammering it cold.
Cracks
Assessed individually, some we turn downHairline cracks in the barrel or on the back of a spoke can be ground out and TIG welded with matched filler, then re-machined. Cracks running through a spoke, across the mounting pad or into the bead seat are a structural failure and we will tell you to replace the wheel instead.
Peeling clear coat and corrosion
Winter salt, cheap wheel cleaner, ageOnce the clear coat lifts, moisture gets under it and the aluminium oxidises into a white chalky bloom that spreads. There is no polishing that out. The old finish has to come off completely, the corrosion has to be cut back to sound metal, and the wheel gets a fresh coating system from primer up.
Full colour changes
Gloss, satin, matte, metallic — sprayed at your placeSilver wheels to gloss black, black to bronze, factory machined face to a solid colour. All four get stripped and coated together so they match exactly. We can also reproduce a two-tone machined face if that is what the wheel started as.
Brake calipers in any colour
Done in your driveway while the wheels are offHigh temperature coating over properly cleaned and etched castings, so it survives heat cycling instead of yellowing and flaking after one summer. Because we are already there with the wheels off, this is the cheapest and easiest time to have it done. Pick a colour from the panel below, or send a paint code and we will match it.
How a rim repair
actually works
No mystery and no marketing. This is the order the work happens in, start to finish, and it all happens beside your car. The van carries the lathe, the welder, the compressor, the spray gear and the curing lamps, so nothing has to leave with us.
We arrive, pull the wheel and measure it
We jack the car, pull the wheel and take it into the van. The tyre comes off the rim, the TPMS sensor and valve come out, and the wheel goes on the machine so we can spin it with a dial indicator against the bead seat and the lip. That reading tells us the truth: how far out of round it is, where the high spot sits, and whether the damage is cosmetic or structural. Nothing gets confirmed as a price until this happens.
Straighten before anything else
If the wheel is bent, it gets fixed before a single gram of filler or paint goes near it. The wheel is clamped to the straightening rig in the van and the bent section is pressed back with a hydraulic ram while the area is warmed, so the aluminium moves instead of tearing. It goes back on the indicator after every pass until the runout is inside spec. Cold hammering a rim straight is how you put a crack in it, so we do not do that.
Weld the cracks and rebuild missing metal
A crack is ground out into a clean V so the weld can reach the full depth, not just bridge the surface. Deep curb gouges get the same treatment, built back up with matched aluminium filler so there is real metal to machine instead of body filler pretending to be a lip. It is TIG welded, then left to normalise before it is cut.
Machine the face back to a true circle
The wheel is mounted on a lathe and turned so the repaired area is cut down to the same profile as the rest of the lip. This is the stage that makes a repair invisible: the tool follows a single continuous arc, so there is no flat spot or step where the damage used to be. If the wheel came from the factory with a machined face, the same setup is used to re-cut those fine concentric grooves.
Strip, sand and prime
Old clear coat, paint and oxidation come off completely. The wheel is sanded through the grits, degreased, scuffed so the coating has something to bite into, and blown down. Any corrosion pitting is cut back to bright metal, because coating over a corroded surface just hides it while it keeps spreading underneath. Then etch primer goes on while the surface is still clean, inside a screened-off area so nothing carries onto your car or your neighbour’s.
Colour, clear and cure
Base coat is laid in light passes so it flows out flat rather than sitting in a heavy wet coat that runs on a curved spoke. Clear goes over the top for gloss and chip resistance, then the wheel is cured under heat lamps so it is genuinely hard before anything touches it. If we are doing all four, they are shot in the same session from the same batch so the colour is identical across the set.
Back on the car before we leave
Tyre goes back on with a fresh valve or the original sensor refitted, the assembly is spin balanced, and the wheel goes back on your car torqued to the manufacturer’s figure with a torque wrench rather than an impact gun. We clean up after ourselves and take everything with us. Re-torque after about a hundred kilometres — we will remind you before we leave.
What we will not repair
We turn work down when a wheel is not safe to put back on a car: cracks through a spoke, through the mounting face or into the bead seat, wheels that have been welded badly by someone else, forged wheels with structural damage, and anything so far out of round that straightening would work the metal past what it can take. You will get told that honestly, with the reason, rather than sold a repair that fails later.
Any colour you want
Tap a colour to see it on the caliper. Whatever you pick gets carried straight into the quote form at the bottom of the page, so you do not have to describe it twice. Calipers are done at your address with the wheels already off.
Pick a colour
- Calipers cleaned, degreased and wire-wheeled back to sound casting before anything is sprayed.
- High temperature coating rated well past normal brake operating heat, so it does not yellow or flake.
- Bleed nipples, pistons, boots and rotor faces masked properly. Nothing gets painted that should not be.
- Gloss, satin or metallic. Optional lettering or a logo decal sealed under the top coat.
- Bring us a paint code and we will match it to your car instead of guessing.
Straight answers
Is a repaired wheel still safe to drive on?
Will the colour match my other three wheels?
How long does a visit take?
How do I get a price?
What do you need from me on the day?
Can you do chrome, or wheels that are chrome now?
What about my tyre pressure sensors?
Tell us what happened
Fill this in and it will open a message to us with everything already written out. Attach your photos and tell us roughly where you are, and you will normally hear back the same day with a price and a time we can come out.