Straightening bent rims

[amalventano at sc.rr.com (Allyn)]

> It seems like
> you'd at least want a piece of wood between the wheel and the hammer

not needed with a rubber dead blow. as long as the surface is clean you will 
do no damage to the wheel.

> that might be a little unsafe because of rebound..

but dead blow hammers dont rebound. thats the idea behind the 'dead' part.

just as an example, i straightened a snowflake for Foxx at cincy this year. 
even using rons dead blow (less weight than mine) it only took a few good 
hits. vw rims (teardrops, snowflakes, etc) are *much* easier to straighten 
than steel wheels. they are softer, and easily bent straight with a dead 
blow. there are some alloy wheels that are harder to straighten. the rieger 
wheels are a funky spun aluminum that has high flexibility / yield strength 
and they just keep bouncing back to their bent shape. to overcome the yield 
it takes some serious wailing, but they do in fact straighten.

side note - you want the heaviest dead blow possible, with a narrow impact 
surface if possible (~2" diameter works pretty good). also, it actually 
helps if the tire is mounted on the rim, as it adds more weight to dampen 
out the impacts.

Al