Damaged Rim

[WanderingTs]

Just an update on this damaged rim:

I went and had my new tires installed. After that I noticed my TPMS light would come on. I found that I had a slow leak in the tire with this rim.

I thought maybe the new tires just didnt seal where the rim was still slightly out of round, but I took it back to the tire place anyway. After dunk testing it, I found out why it only leaked until it was about 20 psi. The rim had a stress crack in it where the metal had bent. It was probably made worse by the tire mounting machine. When aired up to 40 psi, I could hear it hiss. At 20 psi, there was not enough pressure to make the crack leak.

[Matt]

For steel rims this repair is OK.

For aluminum rims, its risky. first off you're lucky you didn't completely crack off that area while hammering it back. But since you did get it to seal enough to get out, that's good, but the wheel needs to be replaced. That stress crack was caused by hammering it back, not the tire machine.

[WanderingTs]

It is replaced. That is just the first time I have had a rim failure that was pressure related. The others were all catastrophic, such as failure around the valve stem or just outright cracked and always leaking.

[WanderingTs]

Update -

I peeled another rim this year in the same general 4X4 area as the original one in this thread. I aired down to about 30psi before starting this particular adventure.

Sidenote - A discussion for another thread, but I know to some of you that isn't airing down much. But I run 50PSi on road as a result of my mpg experiments and I have found this makes a 2-3mpg difference.

This time I again peeled the inside bead off the passenger side front tire. It appears the squishier tire allows the rocks (my primary obstacle in this area) to push in on the sidewall and then catch on the rim. Then as the tire rotates around, this rim takes the full weight of that wheel on the rim/rock combination, bending the rim. This time it didnt peel as bad as last time, and I used the same hammer to bend it back. My only loss was about an hour of hunting light.

When this happened the first time i thought this was just a fluke. Now I am starting to dream of ways to try to protect the rims, especially on the front tires where rocks may press against the sidewall while the tire is turned. One of these times I am going to not be able to bend it back. Worse than that, I dont want to keep replacing rims if this one ends up cracking like the last one did.

Any thoughts?