Diamond Cut Wheel Repair in Manchester

Often the same day, and almost always within the same week. Twenty minutes from Radcliffe puts every M postcode inside a short hop, so a call first thing frequently turns into a visit that afternoon once we have seen photos of the wheel and know the size and finish.

City centre jobs need one extra check before we set off. A lot of apartment and office car parks have height barriers our van cannot pass, so we will ask where the car is parked and, if the headroom is tight, arrange a surface bay nearby or bring the car into the Radcliffe workshop instead.

• M1 to M4 across the city centre and Northern Quarter
• M8, M11 and M12 to the north and east
• M14, M15 and M16 through the university and Old Trafford side
• M19 to M23 covering the southern suburbs
• MediaCityUK and the office parks around the M60

Because most city driving is done within inches of something hard. Ramps in multi storey car parks are built with a raised lip to guide tyres, kerb build outs narrow the side streets, and parallel parking against a high kerb is a daily event rather than an occasional one. A machined face has no primer or basecoat under it, so the first contact goes straight through the lacquer to bare aluminium.

The second half of the problem is the road network. Cars parked in town all week still spend weekends on the M60 and the motorways feeding it, picking up chips along the leading edge of each spoke. Those chips are what let water in, and water is what turns a small mark into corrosion spreading under the clear coat.

• Kerbed faces from multi storey ramps and loading bays
• Concrete edges in apartment car parks
• Stone chips picked up on the M60
• Winter salt lifting the lacquer edge
• Faded painted pockets on two tone wheels

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.

Manchester is the area our mobile technicians visit most, eight miles and about 20 minutes from the Radcliffe body shop. Work ranges from city centre apartment car parks to office parks sitting just off the M60.

We work throughout Manchester and the M1, M2, M3, M4 postcode areas, typically 20 minutes from the body shop at Radcliffe, M26 4AD. That includes the city centre, the Northern Quarter, MediaCityUK and Trafford Park.