Wrythe Lane, pulling over and the kerbed alloys of Carshalton
Wrythe Lane around St Helier Hospital is busy all day with visitors, buses and ambulances, and when blue lights appear behind you there's rarely much room to move over. Drivers tuck hard in to the nearside, and in that moment it's easy to rub a front wheel along the kerb. The same happens on North Street, Nightingale Road and Hackbridge Road, where parked cars leave a narrow gap and the kerb is the only place to go when a bus comes the other way. Around the ponds, where the A232 is narrow and slow with pedestrians and on-street parking, the same squeeze happens several times a day.
Up on the hill, the roads towards Carshalton on the Hill and the Beeches are steeper, and some newer SUVs and premium models there sit on large diamond cut wheels with low-profile tyres. They look sharp, but there's very little rubber to protect the rim. A scrape breaks the lacquer on a diamond cut face, and corrosion then spreads under it, showing as a white, cloudy edge that grows each winter. Families on the hill with older hatchbacks tend to have painted silver wheels instead, which are more forgiving but still corrode at the rim once chipped.
We deal with both. For a painted or powder coated wheel, kerb damage is filled, shaped and refinished to match. For diamond cut wheels, the face is machined on a lathe after the colour coat and sealed with clear lacquer. Because each cut removes a thin layer of metal, we check each wheel has enough material left before we quote. Tyres are removed and refitted, and every wheel is balanced.
From near Honeywood Museum or Grove Park, it's only a few minutes north to us. Every wheel is inspected for cracks first, priced in writing, and covered by our 3-month workmanship warranty afterwards. If you're dropping the car off, Hackbridge station is next to us, so getting home is easy.