Originally Posted by Jabber (Post 211297)

I blew out a tire and damaged one of my 18" Zubra rims on my '08 S80 T6 hitting a pothole. The outside of the rim seemed fine, but the inside was clearly bent. I took it into my local Volvo dealer who has a third-party wheel specialist that comes once a week and I paid $150 to repair the wheel. When I picked up the rim I was surprised to see that the damaged tire was still on the rim and the rim was still dirty. I expressed my displeasure but then had a new tire mounted and balanced at a tire shop other than the dealer because the dealer's price for the tire and mounting was simply outrageous. I also rotated the tires so that the new one is on the rear passenger side. There is still considerable tread, approximately 9/32 on the other three tires' rim repair near me. When the installer mounted the tire he said that the repair was "a little off" and that they would use weight to compensate and that I would most likely not notice. Well, I do - there's clearly a vibration coming from the rear and you can feel and see the passenger seat vibrating when cruising on the highway.

I did some research and it appears that most wheel repair shops remove the tire and use heat to repair the damage to ensure that it is within a minimal tolerance of round. Armed with that knowledge I went back into the dealer today and was told that because the Zubras are alluminum rims that heat should NOT be used because it makes the metal unstable and that a cold fix is better and that it is NOT necessary to take the tire off the rim to make the repair. I called a couple rim repair places (this is all they do) and was told that that is nonsense.

Whom am I to believe?