Hi all, A while back I made a minor dent in the front rim of my DL650. I hit a rock at some speed, going off road at Hollister, CA. I don't have any pictures on hand (will take them), but I found this very similar image somewhere else: You can feel a flat spot when you run your hand along the inside of the rim. I've been riding on it for about 2 months now, mostly hops around town, one 100 mile stretch. But I've started to get worried. The bike doesn't feel noticeably different, but obviously the rim isn't the way it's supposed to be. Of course, I have 4 options: 1. Don't worry about it, maybe rebalance the wheel but leave the dent. 2. Buy a new $500 rim. 3. Try and whack the rim back myself with a block of wood and a hammer. 4. Send it to a wheel repair shop to get fixed. I'm obviously concerned with the rim/tire failing at high speed, but I don't know how bad of a dent this is. If I have to go for option 4, are there any rim shops in the San Francisco bay area that can do this for me for a reasonable price without me having to send the rim in?
Contact Jim Davis at Advanced Cycle Service - http://advcycles.com. I had a Ducati 900ss and he noticed that the rim was bent (worse than your's by the look of it) and he knew of a company that could repair it for me. It came back perfect. - Hans
I've had worse on my TL rims for the last 70k miles...and did more damage to my front of the 690 enduro on OBCDR than yours. I certainly wouldn't worry about it in the least.
I took a dented Honda rim into a wheel specialist in Garden Grove, CA. Unbeknown to me, they shipped it off to someone else to do the work (which was excellent) but forgot to remove the shipping labels when I picked it up from them. So if you want a great job done, with no damage to the finish of the wheel, try www.drjohnsmfs.com
Personally I wouldn't do anything. Actually I'd smack it with a dead blow and you've got two options here. It works and you fixed it for free or you cracked the rim and now you are looking for a new one. I've never cracked a rim doing this and I've fixed a bunch of spoked rims on dirt bikes but I don't want to tell you to go ahead without knowing the risks. That's a fairly minor dent, I've done much much worse on my 950. If it's not causing any symptoms I'd leave it or have a local place do it. Sending it off you're going to spend a good chunk of cash just on shipping.
I ended up deciding not to do anything about it. I have to change my oil soon anyway so I might take the wheel off for a quick rebalance but that's it. Looking at it, the dent was way worse in my mind than it was in actuality (the more I rode it, the bigger the dent became in my head). I'm still planning on doing the occasional dirt road with this bike, so I guess I'm just going to have to get used to it getting banged up.
I would leave it. I wouldn't do anything besides maybe hammering on it in your garage. I had much larger ones on both of my DL's wheels. Rode it for many 10,000's of miles like that. Once a new rear wouldn't seat so then I hammered it out. I would only have a professional take a look at it for aesthetic reasons. That is the smallest wheel dent I've seen.
I noticed something just like that on my rear wheel when I put new tires on. I have no idea how long its been like that, but I've never noticed any adverse effects, its probably been like that as long as I've owned the bike.
I would fix it. I would cut a 4" wide Oak board with a radius slightly smaller than the inside radius of the rim. Use a suitably large hammer, about 3 to 4 lbs. and smack it good. If you want to get real fancy, take the tire and rimstrip off and heat the general area well with small hand torch. Try for about 400F., but don't overheat it. Follow this advice at your own risk. And there is some risk. Joe
At this point I kinda figure the risk of breaking the rim when trying to fix it is larger than the risk of a tire blowout while on the freeway. And because these are aluminium rims, I'd rather not bend it back seeing as that'll just fatigue the metal more. I'll live with it for the foreseeable future.
