Lancia Motor Club

I want to have my ‘spare’ Cromodora wheel refurbished. I don’t want to use Lepsons, who did a less than brilliant job a few years ago. Does anyone know of an alternative, preferably in the London area, that they would recommend?

Colin

www.thewheelspecialist.co.uk are excellent, but are in Garforth near Leeds.

Thanks Richard,

They sound good, but I want to find a more local place because the wheel needs a bit of repair work and I would like to talk to their expert alloy welder before entrusting it to them. Surely somebody out there on this Forum living within reach of London will have had their alloy wheels done! Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Colin

Hi Colin,closer to town is mike barnby at medway city estate who manufactures racing car wheels for historics.perhaps he can help or perhaps knows a man that can.also if you can make it  the brands 'do' is  soon where there should be no shortage of people experienced in refurbishment/crack testing etc of their wheels.richard

Thanks Richard,

Mike Barnby sounds good and clearly he knows a lot about magnesium alloys, as can be seen from his website: http://www.mb-racingwheels.com/index.htm .

The big Brands event this year is 30 June/1 July - when I hope to be sunning myself in Greece (!!), so sorry to say I will miss it.

I am still hoping to find some allow wheel skills a bit nearer me in north London. Meanwhile, I am happy to continue to use my car with one wheel having a very slow puncture. It loses about 4 lb/squinch over a three week period and I suspect this is because the aluminium/magnesium alloy has become slightly porous. Has anyone else experienced this?

Colin

I enjoyed the Royal Engineers museum recently. Of course there's also the docks at Chatham. Upnor Castle is a favorite spot looking at the map just a little north in Upper Upnor which is a name to raise a smile.

As an aside I drove through Beer (South Devon coast) at the weekend which kept us going a good while.  Alas we couldn't find a sign saying "Beer Close".  Do they have a Beer beer festival?  They couldn't have any other kind without confusing everyone.

David

Have to say i am very skeptical about most alloy refurbishers when it comes to magnesium and Cromodora alloys - most have never heard of zinc chromate primer or heating processes to cure and eradicate internal moisture traps. I would be wary of using wheels with internal leaks.

Ian and Alison Jemison have experience with rally car mag wheels:  http://www.ianjemison.co.uk/wheelrefurbishing.html


But the best bet is probably ex Dymag in Wiltshire: http://tpcs-magnesium-refurbs.co.uk/services.php

He has done lots of italian car and bike mag wheels:

http://tpcs-magnesium-refurbs.co.uk/car-wheel-gallery.php

I used Ian Jemison for the repairs and TPCS (Steve Turner) with good results.  I posted the results: http://www.lancia.myzen.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=4397.0

Thanks chaps for all the leads to good people, including links to earlier threads on this forum that I should have known about, but I think I have solved my problem and hopefully won’t need to refurbish my spare Cromodora. The thing is, I always doubted the idea that the alloy had become porous (although I know it’s possible) and today I worked very closely over the questionable wheel and tyre with a detergent mixture and found a tiny puncture, which is now repaired. Such is the joy from finding a simple solution!

Colin

Back to basics - cant beat it!