Leprecon Rim Repair -- Review (and story)

Don't see a thread on these guys so thought I would make one after recent use of their services...

I actually only heard of this place after someone on here mentioned them but I can't find the post for the life of me now so can't remember who it was. Anyway, I'd known of and used Union before and had very good results but seems their prices went way up from what they used to be so despite going there initially, I got a better quote at Leprecon.

TLDR: Really great results, definitely recommend these guys Good pricing, really good service, and pretty quick turnaround times. Being a wheel refinisher they also take really good care when doing mount & balance so out of three different sets of wheels of mine they handled (I only had one set refinished), didn't notice even a scratch on any of them. They actually also recently got into selling wheels and tyres too, so I'll be going back to these guys for all my wheel and tyre stuff in the future! Not only did I find a good place to get wheels redone/repaired, I found what is basically a great tyre shop too

Long story:
Since I bought the TT-S, I've been thinking of getting the wheels refinished. The wheels were actually not that bad but a couple of them were worse than the others with one having a bit of a gouge in it. My initial idea (mentioned in that thread) was to take the stock TT-S wheels and use them as winter wheels on my other car and take a set of brand new Konig wheels I had and put them on the TT. I hummed and hawwed about getting them redone thinking that if they were just winter wheels maybe I shouldn't bother but eventually figured, "what the heck".

I don't like generic colours like silver, black, white TBH, 'cause I'm not a generic person in real life lol. So I figured if I'm getting them redone might as well get them in an actual colour since it's gonna be the same price. I decided to get them done a bright blue which was powder-coat and not paint...paid a little extra (just $15) to get the custom colour shipped so they could be done right away (otherwise they told me I could wait until they make another order of powder and they'd put it in that order but that might be a few weeks). They found one not-visible-from-the-outside bend in one wheel--they showed me on the runout machine--so that cost an extra $60 to fix, but apart from that all went as planned for the refinishing.

They came out pretty great I'd have to say (I didn't take any pics but I can do that tomorrow in the daylight if anyone wants to see). From there I had my brand new winters installed on those wheels by them and the no-seasons the car came with put on the mentioned Konig wheels...only I had miscalculated

Here's where the story gets real long:
The wheels from the TT, before I had all this stuff done, I did test fit them on my other car. I needed a spacer to clear the front brake--just 7mm worked fine (I have various spacers on hand due to the fact this car has upgraded brakes with pretty large calipers) but everything else was good. I put the wheel on the rear too, briefly, and it seemed to fit fine--I wasn't even really worried about the rear.

So after I got the refinishing and tyre swapping all done, I was delighted to put the newly powder-coated wheels on my other car, for winter. Still everything seemed to fit fine but turned out there was a big problem

The wheels from the TT are 18x8.5, but for some reason I had thought they were 18x8.0. That combined with the high-offset meant they were super close to the rear suspension components as well and also...the parking brake cables. Problem was on the rear. The wheels were right pressed into the cables, so much so that it actually caused the parking brake to engage! Obviously I hadn't noticed at all at first--thank working in artificial light since it gets dark at 5pm and having the parking brake applied when installing; but just rolling the car out the driveway an unmistakable scraping noise was heard. I tried both my 12.5 and 15mm spacers and not even the latter was enough to fully clear the cables. A larger spacer would have done the trick but then at that point the ET52 wheel would be at less than ET35 and protruding too far for my liking from the quarters--for winter this is a really dumb idea too so at that point I said, "forget it".

Back to Leprecon:
Due to my own error I had to go back there to basically re-arrange three sets of tyres on three sets of wheels--apart from actually getting that many wheels and tyres there and back. The whole thing was pretty painless. Despite the pretty-darn-confusing requests I had (okay take these tyres of these put them on those, take those tyres from there...lol) they got everything right and no mistakes made. I had to pay for 3x mount and balances of course but their prices for that are pretty good--$15/wheel or $60/set is better than most tyre shops so TBH I think I'll be going back to these guys for all my wheel and tyre stuff in the future.

Because I also really wanted to get rid of those no-seasons by next year (they made a lot of noise too) given I was gonna pay another $60 for M&B to reuse them, I might as well just buy new real tyres right now. I ended up getting General G-Max RS from Greenleaf. This was before I knew Leprecon actually sells tyres too--had I known I'd have just gone with them for the tyres, but I already ordered and put down a deposit.

Anyway as said they did everything right, accommodated all my weird and confusing requests and really happy with the service. In the end, the wheels that came on the TT are back on it, just now with some real tyres and...are bright blue I didn't really intend for them to go on the car with this colour but I still like them--the colour was a better fit for the other car but I'm not one for generic so no way I'd pay to have them re-done silver. I think the car might look better if I get the side mirrors wrapped a similar colour though, because that's what made the silver work on the black car to begin with.