Diamond Cut Wheel Repair in Liverpool

The run is 34 miles and about 50 minutes each way on the M62, which puts Liverpool on our planned route rather than in the short notice slots. In practice that means we ask for a day or two of notice, then confirm the visit for a time that works around your day.

Grouping bookings helps. If two or three Merseyside jobs land in the same week we will usually offer you a date when the van is already heading down the M62, so it is worth mentioning if a neighbour or a colleague has kerbed wheels as well. Anything that needs stripping to bare metal or the tyre removing comes back to Radcliffe instead, with free collection and delivery.

• L1 to L4 for the city centre and the Albert Dock
• L8 and L17 towards Aigburth
• L18 and L25 for Allerton and Woolton
• L15 across the eastern suburbs
• Wirral and Warrington on the same run when dates line up

The lathe work happens at the van, so we need somewhere the car can sit still for a few hours with room to work around it. A driveway is ideal. On the terraced streets nearer the centre a residents bay usually does the job, as long as we can get the van within a few metres of the car.

Weather decides the rest. Lacquer will not cure properly in rain or in cold, damp air, and a badly cured diamond cut face clouds over within months, so we would rather move a Liverpool visit by a day than hand back a wheel that fails by spring. If the forecast is against us, the workshop at Radcliffe is the fallback.

• Photos of each damaged wheel, close up and in daylight
• The wheel size and your registration
• The locking wheel nut key, left in the car
• Somewhere the car can stand for a few hours
• A dry, sheltered spot if the forecast looks poor

A diamond cut alloy wheel is one where the face has been machined on a lathe to expose polished aluminium, then sealed with clear lacquer. The rest of the wheel, usually the pockets between the spokes and often the inner barrel, is painted in a colour such as anthracite, gunmetal or gloss black, which gives the two tone look of a bright face against a dark background.

The finish is common on modern and higher specification cars, and there are a lot of variations. Some wheels are cut across the full face, some only to the outer half of the spoke, and the pitch of the machining differs between manufacturers. That is why the repair needs a lathe and a technician who has cut that style of wheel before, rather than a spray gun and a good eye.

The trade off is durability. Nothing sits between the lacquer and the metal, so stone chips, weathering and winter road salt take a diamond cut wheel apart far faster than they would a standard painted alloy.

Liverpool is a straight 50 minute run out along the M62, so Merseyside dates are set a day or two ahead and often combined with work on the Wirral or in Warrington. Most city bookings come from the L17 and L18 suburbs and the residents parking around the centre.

We work throughout Liverpool and the L1, L2, L3, L4 postcode areas, typically 50 minutes from the body shop at Radcliffe, M26 4AD. That includes Liverpool city centre, the Albert Dock, Woolton and Aigburth.