TJay74

Wife was driving the other night almost home, driver in center lane went to go dodge a dog and came into the wifes lane and forced the wife into the curb. The other driver didn't stop and just kept on driving. My wife was in tears when she called me and sick to her stomach as she knew how expensive these wheels are on the SQ5 for the 21" wheels. I felt bad for her because I told her if she tore these wheels up like her previous car I was going to get her a 1990's Honda Civic to drive.

She got about a 1/3rd of the edge of the rim on the front passenger side wheel. Didn't bend the wheel or the lip, thankfully the tire rim guard protected the wheel some. Lightly scuffed the edge of the rim, I sanded it down for now. Wheels goes down to Dallas tomorrow to see if the lip can be repaired and machined down to match again. That will only cost $150, if it doesn't work already priced a new wheel for $1150 out the door for the local dealer.

Which leads me to my next issue, found a couple of wheels for sale on Ebay and on the Audi forums. Some of these guys are asking $1500+ for a used wheel when retail is only $1040 before tax. I guess there is a sucker out there somewhere for them, no way I am paying $1500 for a used wheel, best I would offer on a used wheel is $600 bucks before I just buy a new one.

We should have the wheel back by Friday and in time for the weekend, not exactly how I wanted to break in the new SQ5 before we even made the 1st payment.

SQ5.TO

Hopefully you will get the rim repaired. They do magic these days.
Could have turned out worse. Good luck with repair and you will put it behind you by the first payment.

BarryT

21x85-aluminum-alloy-5x112mm-bolt-pattern-wheel-rim-98665

Replace® ALY58934U30 - 21" Remanufactured 5 Double Spokes Machined and Charcoal Factory Alloy Wheel

TJay74

All back from the repair shop, they actually did a really good job. If you didn't know the wheel was damaged you would never notice it, the clear coat is slightly off from the factory but we can live with that for now.
Here are the before and after pics....

jbbarrette

Looks great!

scrmorling

+1

ex-quattro PETE

Wife similarly curbed one of the OEM 19" wheels. I'm not even going to bother repairing it for $150, because it won't take long before she does it again. Plan is to get her wider tires when the OEM Contis wear out, and maybe then fix it.

eric strauss

… I hear you. My wife took my new RS5 to work as I needed the access to the back seat her S4 provides. While she was parked, someone scraped the corner of the RS5 bumper pulling into/or out of the space next to her. Damn. $600 to repair. She was in tears when she got home. Gave her a hug, took her out to dinner and remind her that I am lucky to have a wife who tolerates my car shenanigans.

The curb rash issue is a real troublesome development associated with ultra-low profile tires. The race to larger rim diameters forces the engineers to lower the sidewall height. Frankly, I think big rims with small rotors peeking out just looks bizarre, adds unsprung weight and creates a fragile mess. My RS5 has 20" wheels and the largest brake rotors available and they would still easily fit over 18" wheels. As the wheel diameter decreases, the bulge gets a bit wider and the rims are protected. The cars still handle fine. A while back, Car & Driver did a comparison test of different wheel diameters on a VW Golf (Effects of Upsized Wheels and Tires Tested - Tech Dept. - Car and Driver). The overall diameter was held constant.

Not surprisingly, as the wheel size increased, so did weight. Fuel economy and acceleration both suffered, although lateral handling improved slightly. For them, the sweet spot was a 17" or maximally an 18" wheel. Evan skid pad performance dropped with the 19" fitment.

Happy Motoring

Eric

dseag2

I can't blame my wife for this one. I was looking over my right shoulder at merging traffic and ran into the curb on a highway doing over 60 mph. 3/4 of my two front passenger rims have curb rash. I

will be taking the car in on Dec. 28th for wheel repairs. They do a great job in repairing and repainting the rims, but they don't do such a great job with the clear coat so the brake dust no longer comes off so easily. I've had this done before. Damn, high curbs in Dallas!

nathanjbrown

Valet scraped a 4-inch rash on one wheel (can't prove it, of course, but it certainly wasn't me...and I noticed it a few days after a night out with valet parking). I've got the 20" black optics wheel from 2014. Can such a wheel be fixed like the OP's? Or does the "gunmetal" color prevent such a repair?