How I finally solved that driveway curb lip — steps that actually worked

I went the grinder route last fall for a 3/4-inch bump that was constantly scraping the front air dam on my Civic. Rented a 7-inch Makita grinder with a dust shroud from Home Depot and hooked it up to my Rigid shop vac with a HEPA filter. Feathering it back about six inches worked to smooth out the bump, but the aggregate in my slab was surprisingly tough—I chewed trough two diamond cups before getting a slope I was happy with. If anyone tries this, definitly double-check your vac seal, beacuse that fine silica dust manages to escape everywhere.

Aesthetically, grinding exposes all the coarse gravel inside the mix, so you end up with a lighter, speckled strip right at the curb that doesn't match the weathered broom finish. But functionally, it saved my car's underside. I packed the joint with 1/2-inch foam backer rod and topped it with Sikaflex self-leveling sealant like you mentioned. We just went through a wet freeze cycle up here in Ohio, and the slab hasn't budged an eighth of an inch.

If you don't want to grind down the slab or pay for poly jacking, grab a bucket of Aquaphalt 6.0. It's an aggregate cold patch that reacts and hardens with water, completly unlike the cheap oily stuff in bags that stays soft for months.

I built a tight tapered ramp right at the curb lip with it two seasons ago. Tamp it flush with a standard Marshalltown hand tamper, soak it with a hose, and you can drive your car over it an hour later. Hasn't cracked or moved thru two freezing winters.

If you chewed through two cups on that grind, you were almost certainly running a standard medium-to-hard-bond matrix against hard aggregate like chert or river quartz, which glazes the sintered metal over rather than eroding properly to expose fresh industrial diamond grit. For anyone attempting slab grinding where the mix design incorporates dense, high-compressive-strength aggregate, you specifically want a soft-bond cup wheel—the softer bronze or nickel matrix sheds predictably under high abrasion, ensuring you maintain a continuous mechanical cut instead of merely generating thermal glazing and premature tooling wear.