infinite z

Well I just wanted to share my bad luck with you all. First off, my POS rear tires (the REO40's) went bald at 6,000 miles. And I swear I wasn't burning rubber on purpose on these, I think I just got a bad batch.

So anyway, I went to get my new tires put on last night. They're pulling my old tires off my rims, and one guy comes in to get me, with a sad look on his face. I'm thinking, "Holy **** - they broke one of my tire pressure monitors." But that wasn't it. He took me over to one of my beautiful rims lying on the ground, where to my absolute horror I saw a huge crack running across almost the entire width of the rim!

Somehow the compression of the tire on the rim held the crack together and never leaked any air. They couldn't put the new tire on, as the air just shot right out of the crack. God! Why!? My christmas is now ruined, as I've unexpectedly had to drop $1k on new tires and now $532.04 on a new f**king wheel!!!!!!!!!

MustGoFastR

iTrader: (13)

Man, that sucks. Was there any other damage to the wheel or do remember hitting anything? If not, it is probably a manufacturer's defect and should be covered under warranty.

ares

iTrader: (2)

that story sounds a bit loose... see heres what I read, you brought a functioning tire and rim into their shop. and when they touched it the rim ended up cracked. and consequently they made up a BS story about the rim being cracked the whole time and the wheel holding it together???

question for you, has that rim every hit a curb? any noticable damage on its lip or anywhere? it was in "PERFECT" condition prior right?

if thats true, then either the car was delivered with a cracked rim(nissan pays) or they cracked the rim(they pay).

I wouldnt roll over for a 500$ rim, make someone pay. if you do it right, nissan and the shop can battle it out on who broke the rim, cause it wasnt you.

WashUJon

Something's not right here...

ACEMAN

iTrader: (29)

I agree with ares on this one.

I does not seem right that while driving it was held together by the tire. I mean the force that would have been put on the crack would have been alot with going around turns or anything. I think the dealer did someting to the rim, maybe the dropped it after they pulled it off of the car.

Good luck

westpak

iTrader: (19)

I agree there is more you need to look into.

If the air was escaping through the crack why wasn't it escaping before, also how do they know the air is escaping after installing the tire? It sounds like they tried to go ahead and put a tire on and hope it held in place but didn't.

A crack should have a source and it should be evident on the wheel such as a hit on the wheel, the crack has to start somewhere and you should be able to see its origin if it is due to a hit and then you would probably be stuck with it.

The only way you would not be able to see it's origin is if it is stress or material defect related, this would start in the structure of the metal and you could see if you look at the surface of the crack itself maybe with the naked eye or with a microscope.

If no visual evidence of impact is present, tell them that if they do not cover it you will take the wheel to a lab for examination and if it turns out to be stress related or material defect you will sue them for a new wheel as well as costs for testing.

infinite z

Wow lots of good feedback here. Thanks for the suggestions and stuff! Ok, basically here's the deal. I can remember 2 significant impacts on that wheel since I've had the car, both made very loud noises. Since the first one, I've notices a slight shimmy in the steering, that I thought was either supposed to be like that, or was because I may have bent my rim. Well, after driving around with the spare on, and no cracked rim. The shimmy appears to be gone. So I don't think I can attribute this damage to the store that did the tires.

Looking at the rim, there's one area where it looks like it was punctured through. It's kinda pushed out and broken in the center of that, and a crack runs off either side of it. I'd say there was the initial puncture, and then stress over time made the crack bigger. I was pretty much watching these guys do my tires, and I don't know how they could have damaged my rim without me hearing it. Would have made a loud noise I'm sure.

I asked the parts manager at my dealership if it could be a defect and warranty covered. He said a cracked rim wouldn't be, because the only way that could happen is from road damage. So I think I'm SOL here. Thanks for the input guys!

ares

iTrader: (2)

yeah, if you hit a curb or something, then it most likely was you. owell, better to have it replaced so you can fix the shimmy and all that.

westpak

iTrader: (19)

Well I am glad you figured out where the damage started, if that is the impact damage and the cracks start there then I guess you are SOL as you said.

But for future reference and for others, that parts manager is not completly correct, although the majority of the time the damage to a wheel is probably driver induced, there is still a possibility that it could be the wheel, this could be a couple of ways, one is a design flaw in the wheel that creates a stress point not figured out when designing the wheel, this one is low probability since I assume they should know what they are doing but still a possibility. The second is a material flaw that creates a stress riser and over time will crack and fail, this can happen with a bad batch of material or change in manufacturing process or manufacturing plant.

So I guess my advice is not to assume the obvious, this could be applied to any part in the car not just wheels.

infinite z

An update on what I'm going to do here. I want to make sure that I'm not getting screwed here, so I'm going to take the wheel to a wheel repair shop and get an expert opinion on how the damage was caused. If they tell me that I couldn't have done it on the road, then somebody is getting a serious ***-tearing by me. I'm pretty sure I must have done it, but I want to be sure.

abz123

It sounds like the crack has been there for a while. The crack prolly caused a slow leak in your tire. Not knowing about the leak, you have been driving around with a tire with low pressure. That was prolly the cause of the balding. The thing that throws this theory out the window is the tire pressure monitor should have showed you the fact that the tire was low on air.

That sucks!

infinite z

Well sir that is a really good theory, but unfortunately not correct for my case. I constantly check my tire pressure with the monitor, and it has NEVER been low. In fact, it's always been the same as my other tires. On top of that, the cracked rim is my front right rim, and my front tires are not even close to being bald. But a valiant effort to help me out though!

droideka

You can have my bent rim if you really need it. Maybe get it fixed even. I didn't want to spend the time looking into fixing it and got my new rim in short order.

infinite z

Really? Is it a performance front rim? How much did you pay for your replacement rim? This could be really sweet!

droideka

Check your PM.

Thunderbolt

Just a note:
In all the years I did front end work the right front would be where I would find the most damage. This is the first wheel to hit a pot hole, brick or other road object. The right rear was the one that took the most curb hits due to turning into the curb while turning right.

infinite z

Well Thunderbolt, I fall into that generality perfectly then. I have now both cracked my right front wheel, and scraped my right rear wheel on a curb while turning right!


New update - The repair shop looked at my cracked wheel, and said it's toast. So on to other options for me...

Thunderbolt

Damn! I just look at your car avatr. Did you wreck the left front too? j/k It has happned to me too. Cracked the right rear axel on my old Firebird.

infinite z

Here's some pics I just shot:

infinite z

Here's another: