Reshaping alloy wheels

[stealthstylz]

I don't think anybody will have any first hand experience of this but I'm asking just incase, as I've only seen it done once on a dragster. Basically what I'm wanting to do is round off the sharp corners on a set of alloys so the spokes have a curvier shape to them. Wouldn't be a huge amount of material removed, maybe a 5mm radius where a sharp corner is now.

Any thoughts?

[chairchild]

If there's enough material it's possible - but you'd be best off getting it done in a CNC mill, to ensure the same amount of material is removed from each one


Otherwise, it'd be...erm... "interesting" to balance

[stealthstylz]

That would be ridiculously expensive though which would render the whole exercise pointless. I think I'm just gonna do one by hand, then put a tyre on and see how well it balances up. I can't see the amount of material I want to remove having that much effect.

[cobblers]

Are they fairly flat faced? You can work aluminium with a normal wood router and a roundover bit of you use plenty of WD40 to stop it galling up on the cutter, and only take a bit off at a time.
That way you could get quite repeatable and uniform amounts of material taken off, it should balance up OK.

No need to put a tyre on it to see if the wheel itself balances.

[stealthstylz]

They're Fiat Abarth claw wheels.



Basically would be rounding the flat face of the spokes so they haven't got the defined face.

[cobblers]

ah you'd struggle with a router then - maybe get the outside of the "claw" but the inside drops off a bit shallow and you'd not have anything to comfortably ride the bearing on. Were you going to knock those 3 pairs of "teeth" off aswell?

[stealthstylz]

I was thinking about it but not sure if they're there for a reason other than styling, and probably would effect the balance I'd I got it wrong.

[v8ian]

make up a small sheet metal template/s (profile and radii) of what you are trying to acheive, that will give you a good idea of how close the spokes are to each other

[squonk]

I would 100% guarantee that if you did this your insurance company would not cover you if you told them about the mod. If you don't tell them and you have an accident, again you would not be covered.

These days insurance companies will use the slightest excuse not to pay up.

[stealthstylz]

Yeah I have thought about that, insurance company were fine when I asked them, they've insured cars before with D90 P slots.