Has anyone seen a crack in a 350Z wheel like this one:





I found this crack on my ~38k mile 2004 350Z a few months ago. I wash my car fairly regularly and had never noticed this crack so I suspect it had formed recently. The crack is all the way through the wheel, the pictures show the front and back of the crack. I have no tire damage or any other damage to the wheel.

A new wheel from Nissan is ~$800, and a refurbished wheel is ~$300. I went with the latter for the replacement.

Let me know if anyone has seen this sort of crack as Nissan, (The dealership in my area "Nissan North" and Nissan Consumer Affairs) argued that I had a "significant" impact and that it was not a manufacturing defect.

-columbusz

 

Yes, wheels can crack. It's rare but it does happen. There is a known problem with the chromed ones cracking but that wouldn't be your case.

Sad thing is that if you had joined before now and searched the Marketplace, you could have found a set of 4 wheels for $300.

Search this forum for "cracked" and you'll see a lot of threads on the subject. Here's a few related to OEM wheels...

https://my350z.com/forum/wheels-and-...0z-wheels.html

https://my350z.com/forum/wheels-and-...re-to-buy.html

https://my350z.com/forum/wheels-and-...d-7-spoke.html

https://my350z.com/forum/wheels-and-...yesterday.html

 

Thanks for the response. I of course did not need 4 wheels and wanted a wheel that didn't have others evidence of failed parking attempts.

In any case, I did search for a used set at the time and couldn't quite find what I needed. I'm sure good deals are available, with time for $300.

I had read most of the posts you have linked previously and was well aware of the chrome wheel issue. One thing that none of those posts seemed to determine was how widespread having this issue is. Did Nissan manufacturer 1 bad wheel out of 100, 1000, 10000? Who knows.

 

Maybe sign from god to get aftermarket rims? 800 for one stock 03+ plus rim...double that and you can find four aftermarket rims!

 

yea i have the chrome oem's im just patiently waiting for this to happen the chrome ones are a factory defect tho..
.

 

You're right - nobody knows. That's no something that Nissan would not publish. Obviously, enough of the chromed ones have failed to get the attention of NHTSA for them to start a study of the problem.

The rate of failure for non-chromed OEM wheels is significantly less. There have been almost 600K OEM wheels sold for the Z alone (plus millions of similiar ones on the Maxima, Altima and other Nissan vehicles) yet we've only seen a handful of them reported here.

Anything made of metal that is subject to repetitive stresses and strains has the possibility of stress cracks or total failure. I'm pretty confident they're designed for a failure rate in the one per tens of millions.

 

That's unfortunate.

You can crack any wheels except Volks. Stronger than the black box on airlines.

 

Then why don't they make the planes out of Volks?

 

Airlines can't afford them

 

What the heck! the oem 's are made in Thailand?

 

Then I guess they have to make them out of whatever the blackbox is made of.

 

I cracked one way back when on my old Z... I actually picked up a used one from a friend that worked at Nissan. They had a few of them being stored...

 

Usually craigslist has tons of these wheels available for very, very cheap.

 

Dave,
I was one of a few cases outside of California that had contacted them regarding this issue. I had the stock OEM '06 wheels and I found cracks on 3 of the 4. I bought the car used and these were already on it. I found out that mine were done by an aftermarket place. Anyway, the NHTSA performed an investigation as well as stress analysis on the Nissan design. They concluded that there is no design flaws in the Nissan design (at least for the '06 OEM wheels). This investigation took between a year and 18 months to complete. I was hoping for the best, like maybe Nissan actually providing me with new wheels, but that didn't happen. I eventually paid $400 for a set of take-offs from the place that chromed the wheels originally. Nissan was no help. Here is the link to their documents involved in the investigation.

http://nhthqnwws112.odi.nhtsa.dot.go...romPublic=true

 

Here was mine a couple of years ago...it is a bit hard to see in the picture, but I would say it is about the same spot as the one on your style wheel. It was cracked around the backside too. This was the largest one of the 3 wheels that were cracked. That's the best I could do with my crappy phone camera that day.

 

That really isnt the point though as you could potentally end up in the same situation a few months down the road with the same wheels again. What needs to be address is WHY its doing this, its probably a impurity in the aluminum casting id say, either way no OEM should be doing this ever. They should last the life of the car regardless.

 

From what I have read on previous posts and the responses here, I gather having a cracked non-chrome 350z wheel is fairly rare. I agree with Eddie that this, of all parts on a car, should not be failing.

I know that Ferrari does an x-ray of all cast aluminum parts to look for internal cracks and imperfections. I guess we can't expect that from a mass produced car, with wheels made in Thailand.

Thanks for everyone's input.