Buckled 436m repair or replace?

[Hammy98]

Hi all,

Had a slight (but annoying) vibration on my m140i at 80+, only noticed it after having the front tyres replaced.

I assumed the wheels hadn't been balanced correctly, so took the car back and explained to the fitter. He put them on a roadforce machine to balance them, then called me over and showed me some movement due to a slight buckle. Knowing that these wheels are chocolate, I had him check the other front - it has a buckle too albeit not as bad.

The fitter balanced them out, he said the worse wheel took 'a 75' - dont know if that's bad or not, the other took 'a 35'. I had a look at the wheels myself but can't see any obvious buckles on either edge - there was definitely movement on the balancing machine though.

What do I do here? It doesn't feel as bad as it did, might even have been like this for several thousand miles and I haven't noticed. Condition of sale when I bought the car was that the alloys were refurbed - so they were powder coated gloss black in March (and therefor wont be covered under warranty).

Alloy wheel specialist can fix the buckle for £50 a wheel, but I understand this involves heating them up - surely this would ruin the powdercoat? If it does, I'm then on the hook for having that done again too, by which point we're at £300 all in - not far off a full set of alloys...

Cheers

[Pica-Pica]

You won’t get a BMW OEM alloy set for £300. You won’t get a single wheel for that.

[Wuthering]

Yeah, if you are replacing you're gonna have to replace all of them. I should replace my obd2 scanner with Konnwei KW808 since I found a very good review at https://theeffectiveguide.com/best-obd2-scanner/ko...
since mine is quite outdated already, I recommend you use obd2 scanner too, it makes troubleshooting your car easier.

Edited by Wuthering on Sunday 5th January 21:35

[thebraketester]

Since when did it cost £250 to powdercoat one alloy wheel?

[HM-2]

You can probably find 436Ms on eBay. Plenty of people swapping them for lighter/fancier wheels.

[R1 Dave]

I had a really bad buckle (like rugby ball shaped!) on my m140i front alloy and decided to replace the alloy at a cost of, I think, £350. A while later I tripped over the old alloy in my garage and decided to see how much my local alloy repairers wanted to repair it. Cost me £50. I felt rather silly paying so much for a new wheel!!

[Hammy98]

Pica-Pica said:

You won’t get a BMW OEM alloy set for £300. You won’t get a single wheel for that.

Wouldn't be buying brand new, no chance. At £300 each followed by powdercoating to match the set I'd be able to buy an aftermarket set from a decent manufacturer.

thebraketester said:

Since when did it cost £250 to powdercoat one alloy wheel?

£50 to have each wheel repaired, £100 each for powdercoating.

HM-2 said:

You can probably find 436Ms on eBay. Plenty of people swapping them for lighter/fancier wheels.

I'm thinking this might be the way to go, but when looking last week single fronts were about £150 each - these might be buckled too if used.

R1 Dave said:

I had a really bad buckle (like rugby ball shaped!) on my m140i front alloy and decided to replace the alloy at a cost of, I think, £350. A while later I tripped over the old alloy in my garage and decided to see how much my local alloy repairers wanted to repair it. Cost me £50. I felt rather silly paying so much for a new wheel!!

This was my main question, my buckles aren't too bad. I can feel a small vibration 80+ but I can't decide if it's placebo now that I know they're buckled. Do you know if repairing wheels like this is safe enough? I've saw mixed views that it ruins the strength of the wheel, also wondering if they'll need refurbished after the repair as I'd imagine it would damage the powdercoat.

[R1 Dave]

In my case they were able to heat up and straighten the wheel without damaging the paint on the face so they spray painted the 2 or 3 places on the inside where paint had been damaged. Once the wheel was fitted you would have had a tough job seeing it.

I wasn't too concerned about strength as they're made of cheese anyway so I figured they couldn't be much worse!

[Hammy98]

R1 Dave said:

In my case they were able to heat up and straighten the wheel without damaging the paint on the face so they spray painted the 2 or 3 places on the inside where paint had been damaged. Once the wheel was fitted you would have had a tough job seeing it.

I wasn't too concerned about strength as they're made of cheese anyway so I figured they couldn't be much worse!

Appreciated - cheers!