Well Ash it all depends on the material. With plain carbon steels, yes the weld is the strongest part. But once you move onto quenched and tempered steels like Bisaloy, which is a very tough but brittle material, the heat affected zone is the weakest part.

As for aluminium and its alloys, if you don't know the exact grade of ally then you normally weld with 1000 series natural aluminium filler rods. These are rather soft compared to what you are trying to weld. This helps against crack propagation but being soft it not as strong as the parent metal. I've got a few lists of what goes with what lying around somewhere, try and dig them up for you one day.

If you paid attention you'd be on 300k by now and telling me what to do

You guys make me cry talking about having access to workshops that can actually do more than weld a gusset into a tinny...

Here in the deep north if you try asking places about repairing or modifying wheels they pull out a chewwy bakky bag and reach fer the banjo before saying "you wanna do WHUT!"

Called a place thats in the book under "wheel repairs" about repairing a mag with a small bit knocked out of the rim - and when he realised I meant there was actually a small piece MISSING it was like I wanted to have a plasma injector out of my warp engine repaired. Evidently their concept of "wheel repair" didn't go beyond belting out gutter dings with a big hammer...

Wheels Australia do repair work, and could probably widen up some steel rims by removing the center & fitting to a new "rim" piece wider than stock. It was commonly done back in the 70's & 80's. How else do you get 8 inch wide early holden steel rims, when they were like 4 or 4.5 inch wide from GMH? lol.

Some 15x9 or 10 steel wheels would be good for some drag radials......

Cheers

ToranaGuy

Just noticed this thread...

Vic, I forgot to tell you about this place...

NEWAY WHEEL REPAIRS

11 Beatrice Ave, Heidelberg West, VIC 3081
North VIC

p: 03 94573141

I have heard good things about them in regards to repairing bent/cracked wheels for both 2 wheels and 4. Haven't used them myself...was going to but they couldn't save my severely bent bike wheel. They seemed busy though last time I was there, so there may be a wait.