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This is what happened to me... I only spotted this a couple of months ago. Had the rims for nearly 3 years and 1 puncture repair a year ago. So not quite sure when it happened
There is no tire machine that can cause that damage. That is from road/curb impact. You can see the scraping in all of the indents. You may even have a crack in that wheel but the picture can't really be zoomed in for me to be certain.
Wheel balance cones can either come from the front or the back. Paint damage WILL eventually occur but should always be invisible when mounted and installed with center caps.
Specialty wheels will be reverse clamped with nylon or urethane being the only thing touching the wheel and will leave no marks.
I run a shop and I personally mount and balance all of the race wheels and tires, including my own. The only time I pass on a job is if I get a weird feeling from one of my potential clients or specialty wheels looking like the above come into my shop. I take pictures or show the customer and bolt the wheels right back on and roll it out. There are unfortunately too many people that claim wheel damage and either want refunds or new wheels and I refuse to expose my technicians and my business to that at all.
And for reference, that "Road Hunter" you were referring to was most likely in reference to a video you saw on Facebook. It's from Hunter Engineering and it's the new Revolution touchless tire machine. It retails USED for around $27,000 and new for around $35,000 and has absolutely nothing to do with balancing a tire.
Now if you think the shop did damage a wheel, post a picture and I can probably tell you yay or nay, but most damage does occur elsewhere.
i went to tire central in san gabriel. dont want to give them a bad rep because the rest of the wheel was perfect. but the wheel weights that they put on also ended up falling off a week later on every single wheel
i wish i took pictures of the damage before i put touch up paint on them but the damage basically looked like this
you guys check this area after mounting and balancing a wheel? im sad : (((
I personally mounted and balanced my own CE28's and thousands of customers wheels.
Balancing:
That inside portion of the wheel where the arrow is pointing in your picture can sometimes get scuffed from the balancer. 98% of balancers use a steel cone and it wedges itself into the hub of the wheel. I can guarantee you if I remove the CE's off my car that area of the wheel will be scuffed. The rest of the wheel is still 100% mint.
Mounting/Dismounting:
Now, scratching the lip of the rim is 100% possible and quite easy to do if an apprentice or an ape is doing the mounting. Takes a bit of skill and experience to mount tires onto wheels without scratching on a manual machine which most shops will have. The 100% automatic Hunter tire machines will not scratch anything as they physically do not touch the rim ever during mounting or dismounting, but you'll need to go to a high end manufacturer to have access to that machine.
You can see thread marks in the gouges. If those are not clamp marks somehow you ran over something threaded with no air to make those marks.
Some looks like curb rash.
I sure as heck would have noticed that. When I got new Pilot SS at Costco, I went over each wheel with the supervisor (he wanted to do it too) because mine are pristine without any marks. We both wanted to be sure there were no surprises at the end of the install.
01-25-2018, 09:20 AM
