URGENT: Rim Damage bearable?

[wiso]

tongiht on the way to the local shops i was coming around a corner slowly when the car suddenly bottomed out with a loud craping.

My lower ball joint sheared dropping the lower control arm into the rim, thus the control arm being steel, and the rim alloy this has made a groove all around the rim, just about the centre.


My desperate question. will the rim be ok to keep driving on with a almost 1mm deep groove dug in all the way around it.

I am moving to sydney in 2 days and really don't have time to get it fixed now, and really don't have the time to change back to my stock rims.

So if i keep driving on it will it possibly crack the rim in half???

I'll get pics in the morning. But i need advise asap

[BigWorm]

I personally wouldn't worry about it too much, although if it did begin to crack it would result in the rim eventually splitting in 2 (but you'd most likely have a wheel that couldn't hold any pressure before that happened).

If you wanted to ensure it would last as long as possible, you need to blend out the scratch. Spin the rim 'round while holding a coarse scotch brite on the scratch, & work your way up to a fine scotch brite or some really fine wet & dry. If it's really smooth a polished it'll reduce the chance on any cracks propogating.

[LeeRoy]

I wouldnt imagine it would crack or break in half anytime soon as rims are pretty thich with probably a few mm in the middle. As bigworm mentioned it will probably leak air before it sends you off the road but as for getting it fixed you could always find a place to weld the groove.

- LeeRoy

[wiso]

ok, in the morning it doens't quite look as bad, the control arm ripped in at an angle, the scatch would only be 1mm deep max, but it has made a lip on one side. although the chunk out of it looks alot deeper than that :O

So hopefuly some sand paper to smooth it out should do the trick cheers guys