Anyone ever weld filled curb rash? I have access to a lathe at my high school, so I was thinking about welding the gashes and then re-machining the faces of my fat fives.

 

bump

 

You might think about using low temp braze and then machining that, there would be less heat and less stress on the wheel. There is knock off stuff called alumi well or something like that. Or you can go to your welding suppler and ask them about their stuff.

 

I have done it a number of times, if it is minor I sand off the paint tig at about 100 amps with 4030 filler then use a combination of hand file, dremel, and sandpaper to reform the lip. If its really bad or over a large area you would probably need a lathe to fix it that is what professional wheel repair shops do. Here is the process I used to fix a cracked bbs barrel its basically the same thing for the lip /
here is one I had done professionally
before
after

 

There is a DIY for this somewhere. I have done it as well. It's a painstaking process, but you can get it done 1 wheel a night.

 

Just weld it up, then turn it on the lathe. Then repeat until you have no low spots. Turn up the speed when you've got it right and polish it out with emery cloth and scotchbrite pads. Done quite a few of them in our shop, not something I would want to try to make a living doing. What a pain the butt.

 

How would I run them on the lathe? Im a newb at this lol
Its not just the lip, the spokes on the rim have some as well.

 

We built fixtures to hold the wheels on lathe - lit looked like a combination of a mandrel/wheel spacer. The lathe is only useful for turning the profile. If you have work that has to be done to the spokes on the rim, you will need to run those in a manual mill or have a very careful/precise hand grinder/sander setup.

 

You might do some research on how strength is reduced in aluminium alloys if you overheat them. It seems obvious, but a wheel is a stressed part that you depend on at speeds higher than 5 MPH, and you'd just as soon know exactly what you can do without making it so weak it fails when you're in it...

 

I emailed the company that makes the lathe. They said it would machine aluminum, but not steel. Fat fives are alloy...

It seems like it will be much easier and less confusing to just jb weld everything shut, sand it, and paint them silver.