I've been doing my research with the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) and they were talking about cracking in oem rims..
http://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/pr...fectsearch.cfm

and if you do any kind of aftermarket chroming to them i.e. powdercoating, you could increase the life expectancy of the wheel. so the main wheel they were talking about were these...

 

My primary concern is that do these wheels pertain to all of the defects of powdercoated? Or are these wheels already crack prone?

 

Increase?

 

*decrease*^

 

Holy %^$#... I drive over some of the toughest roads in the country in NJ-NYC and i have a set of those.. I wonder how those cracked?

 

Any wheels can crack.

End of story.

 

^^^good point

 

nissan says aftermarket PC

PC says its nissan manufacturing

...just read the link above i posted with post #1

 

It's true, but in my research and number crunching, it's statistically low. Read more here: https://my350z.com/forum/6962072-post9.html

 

+1^ thanks for all the stats that def makes me feel comfortable

 

It's been discussed at great length here...

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

 

yes i've researched that and dug through all your treasure chests full of this incident, BUT when nissan says 5 SPOKE! are they referring to the wheel thats all busted up in POST 1, or are they also referring to the wheel in POST 2??? (the factory chrome wheel)

 

It can be any wheel that has been chromed by an aftermarket processor. Apparently, some people are claiming the same problem after powdercoating but that was not what NHTSA was investigating. While powdercoating does involve baking the wheel, there's nothing to suggest that heat is the problem. Chroming involves hot chemical baths which caused embrittlement of the metal leading to increased failure rates.

 

so what your saying is that the chrome wheels that came from the factory on my 07, are not liable to this issue? ~or~ every wheel thats chrome like the ones i have that came from nissan were actually "chromed" in an aftermarket facility thus i'm liable to this issue? ~or~ I should have no problem relateting to this kind of thing?-because when they say "chromed" and they show a picture of the wheels in post one, i get confused because i've never sen those wheels in chrome, thats why i thought they were talking about mine as well.

so what does it mean when they are refering to "chromed?"

 

Actually, the picture in the government notice is kinda' deceptive, as it looks like a 2005+ style anniversery wheel which is powercoated/painted like all the other OEM wheels are.

The way I understand it, Nissan and NHTSA are claiming the problem is with wheels that are chromed by aftermarket shops and not the ones that came from Nissan already chromed. If they were originally chromed then re-chromed by a shop, then yes, they suffer from the same potential problem. The implication to the whole story is that the chroming procedure that shops normally do to any metal is not proper/safe for aluminum wheels. The temperatures and chemicals used can cause the aluminum to become brittle and brittle metal subjected to repeated stress and shocks that wheels endure can cause them to crack and fail.


Basically, if you ordered a car with chrome wheels, or bought them from a dealer new, then they are the Nissan wheels and should not be a problem. If somebody damaged their chrome wheel and sent them to be repaired and rechromed, or they took other OEM wheels (17" painted, 18" painted/powdercoated) and sent them to be chromed, then those would be the ones to be concerned with.

To be safe, I'd pull them off the car every 10K miles or so and inspect the spokes, especially where they meet the hub or rim.

 

ok thanks so there was only one other owner of the car and they only put 4k miles on it and when i purchased and did a history report it was clean. So the factory chrome from the nissan is clearly safe but suseptible to any damage just as any other wheel would be. So the main thing is that if I had them rechromed somewhere at an aftermarket shop, the wheels would be more liable to fail.

Nissan chrome wheels from the factory are ok then?

But as far as we are concerned powdercoating a factory wheel should not even cause the wheel to be anywhere close to having the integrity life of the wheel stripped away as it was chromed by an aftermarket company?

 

My 07 OEM wheel (front driver side) cracked around 18000 miles. No chroming no painting no nothing. I drove it on Ortega a couple times while they were widening the road, but not very fast... Replaced all four with Halos after that, all better now.