I bought my SS 6MT Enthusiast in March of 2006 and love the car. This is my second Z, I drove my 86 300ZX until it had 185K on it. My only complaint is that I have this black "stuff" on my left front and rear wheels that won't come off with detailing. I first noticed it several months ago and took it to a dealer who told me that I ran over some black paint and that Nissan would not cover it anyways.
I think the dealer is full of crap. I did not run over anything, the black stuff did not pool out to the rim, as it should (if I remember college physics) due to centrifugal force and it looks like the chrome or clear coat has been eaten away.
I'm not planning on getting new rims, as I will be upgrading cars when I finish my surgical residency in 2 years.

I've searched for this on the forums and can't find anything. Here are a couple of pictures. Has anyone seen this before? Is this a manufacturing defect? Should Nissan replace the wheels?





Thanks!

 

I have an 06 and definately do not have this on my wheels

 

I speak the same,,,06 here,,no problems with my wheels...It does look like some type of acid or cleaning agent that broke down the finish of the wheel?

 

+1 on the acid. It could also be baked on tar, from road works perhaps. The same thing happened to me on my current car, where i drove through an area of road works, and with the heat of the tar, and the heat from the brakes, the tar baked itself on to the wheels. The only way i could get rid of it was to sand it out and polish it up.

 

my '06 stock rims are fine. Sorry that this happened. It must be very annoying but you only really have two choices...

 

Just ask Santa for some new Volks or Work wheels for Christmas
Looks like something as eaten off the clear coat....not acid I took lots of acid and never did this to me

 

To clarify:
I don't think it is tar from the road as it is only on the left side and there is NO tar on the paint. I also don't think it is a cleaning solution as it should be on all 4 wheels and my local car wash has not changed their cleaning solutions (I asked) and they also detailed my POS 2002 Eclipse GT for 4 years and it never had this problem.
So my question is, when the car is made and rolls down the assembly line, don't the left and right wheels come from different bins? In other words, how can I convince the dealer that this is their fault and they need to replace them?

 

Good luck with this. I highly doubt that it was a defect in the wheels. It is going to be very hard to prove that is the case.

Does it feel like the finish is missing or does it seem to be something on the wheels themselves?

How many miles do you have on them? Did you just all of a sudden notice this or has it progressively gotten worse?

 

take it to tire shop and ask

 

Buy some Oops cleaner from the paint dept. at Wal-Mart or any hardware store. Put that on a rag and see if it wipes off. It looks like tar to me.