Are you experiencing a vibration from your steering wheel or excessive tyre wear or tyres which don’t seem to be lasting very long after purchase? Then it is most likely that you may have fallen victim to the ‘pothole plague’ and experienced that awful feeling where you cannot avoid going through a pothole due to the traffic conditions or bad road surfaces and then experience that crunching sound when your wheel gets bent in some way. If you hit a pothole or object on the road and your wheel is buckled don’t rush out to a dealer and buy an expensive replacement wheel. Most dealers will advise you to replace your damaged mags at a hefty cost. No matter how minor the damage is, out of shape wheels will not only destroy your tyres but the vibrations can cause serious damage to both the steering and suspension components of your vehicle. In their worst form they will not hold air or lose air rapidly.
At Centurion Mag Repairs, we have invested in hydraulically assisted wheel straightening equipment. This equipment coupled with the experience and skill of our technicians enables us to straighten and repair damaged wheels. Hydraulic assistance is a process which involves a combination of heating the wheel and then using hydraulic rams to press out any bends in the heated metal. The wheel is first placed on a specialized jig within the wheel straightening rig which centers the wheel. The wheel shape is then measured with a dial gauge to identify the location of any deformed sections. The operator then uses their skill to determine the correct balance of heat and pressure required to transform the wheel back to its correct shape. The process of heating the wheel in the spot to be repaired softens the metal and makes it much less likely that the alloy will crack under the pressure required to straighten the bend. Once the wheel is straightened the alloy must be heat treated once again in order to strengthen it, as the heat and forces involved in the straightening process change the molecular structure of the wheel.