I have my car at the dealership for some warranty work. Coming up on the 60,000km mark so I wanted to get everything repaird that can be repaired.

They said that 3 of my rims are bent and can't be properly balanced. What the hell? I'm pretty careful with them. I know they aren't obviously chipped or bent, and that I haven't hit any super deep pot holes.

Is this an issue with the OEM 18's? Or am I just unlucky or have hit enough smaller potholes that I damaged them slightly and never noticed?

I'm planning on taking the rims to a specialty tire shop with a sweet Hunter 9700 balancer for a second opinion. I just wondered if others had bent rim issues.

Further more, I'm wondering if the same thing will happen if I replace the OEM rims with aftermarket rims like an MSR or HP Racing brand.

CM

 

I think they're scamming you. Did they show you the runout with a dial gauge? If not, I'd suspect that they're pulling something shady on you.

Go to your independent shop and have them check the runout against spec before you get too worried.

 

go to a shop that does tire balancing to make sure..... there is a good possibility that they had it up in the air and spun the tires to visually check the tires and saw a slight wabble thinking it was your tires..... have you changed the oem rotors...... from what people are saying they warp quickly and most suggest swapping them out..... try discount tires for balancing

 

I don't think they are scamming me. The SA suggested that this was the opportunity to get some swank new aftermarket rims. He didn't suggest a new set of OEM's or to go buy them at his buddys shop or anything.

The car was just in for brake service. They have a new "on car" rotor turning machine. Supposed to be able to take into account the eccentricity of the axle and hub into the cut of the rotors. Makes sense to me that it would work better than a regular lathe. The rotors have only about 20,000km on them. I had them changed once already under warranty at 36,000ish.

I will get to a decent shop sometime in the next couple weeks. I'm really suprised there are not more shops with that Hunter machine. Frustrating that there aren't more places actually.

CM

 

I'm curious about tire wear. If you have bent rims, beyond the lack of "sensation" while driving, you/they should be seeing some kind of signs of abnormal tire wear. IMO especially on an RSA Goodyear.

.02

 

I had ONE bent rim -- slightly bent at that -- and you could FEEL that ***** when you got up to speed. 18s too.

If you have 3 bent rims it'd be like riding with square stone wheels, unless it's so slight that you wouldn't notice it...

I'd say see if you can get them fixed... and if you want to then sell them and get aftermarket. I'd still get a second opinion on that though...

 

Lucky for me I have pictures of each rim before the balancing job. I bet I could go back to that balance point if I really needed to.

Before the balancing they felt 95% balanced. I just picked the car up and their balancing job is awful. Its more like 65% balanced now. If I go above 110kph it feels like the car is falling appart. Doing 140kph to pass someone is unimmaginable. They put on WAY more weights than before. Big ol strips of them. Monday the wheels are getting shipped to the nearest tire shop with a Hunter 9700.

And to add to my list of issues, the newly painted hood doesn't match, and they over sanded and caught my light housing and scuffed the side of the front 1/4 panel over the wheel. Man what a soap opera this has become.

CM

 

WOW....who to shoot first. Well...you definately wouldn't think 18's would be an issue to balance. As far as the hood....time to knock some heads. Maybe you will look back in a week or so and laugh. Or...maybe not.

Hang in there

 

I've had 3 bent rims so far, closing in on 60K

Just changed all 4 tires, new rotors and brake pads also

 

Were there any collisions with pot holes that you can remember damaging your rims? Or was it just a suprise one day they turned out to be bent?

CM

 

Two of the rims were due to collisions with potholes, but the only suprise was my last one. When I went to put on new rotors and brakes, they told me I had a bent rim, couldn't really remember hitting any potholes, but I do alot of driving, so it's hard to recall alot

 

Were they visibly out of round ie...bent, flat spot on the inside edge, chip out of rim edge?

Mine look damn near perfect.

CM

 

When I got my Infiniti M45 last year they offered wheel and tire insurance, for around $250. I'm not one to buy stuff like this, but I was aware the M's wheels were about $950 apiece, so after some thought I went ahead and got it. I figure it would take care of problems like your bent rims, and it would be a cheap investment if it did.

So on the next go-round, you guys might want to consider it ...

 

I also got a bent rim within the first 15 thousand... which is what has caused the shimmy in my car. Nothing you can really do about it, except get some new ones if you have the money.

 

Similar incident happended on my mom's 5.5gen. 3 out of the 4 OEM rims were bent, due to the construction on this stretch of hwy. They didn't level the pavement to the exit ramp so everytime you came off, KABOOM.

My dad took it to Sears. First time around he said they weren't balanced correctly. So they checked them the 2nd time and realized 3 of the rims were bent. They called my dad out to the shop to show him.

Ended up getting aftermarket for the time being and my dad eventually got the OEMs straightended out at a shop in PA.

Any 17" wheel or higher has a higher chance of bending due to the skinny sidewalls. This does smell like a chance to upgrade though .

 

you can get oem replacements for 225.00. keystone wheels

 

Turns out they let some retarded crack monkey trying to kick a heroin addiction balance my wheels. The second shop says there's nothing wrong with 3 of them that a few grams of new weights wouldn't fix and the 4th just needed the tire pulled rotated and rebalanced to get it back in good shape.

Thats the last time I ever trust a shop without a state of the art balancer.

Toyota came good on the paint issue. They've agreed to repaint the entire front end to match.

Man what an ordeal. Now I can go ahead and order my new Raceline Endlinks!

CM

 

ya..its tough gettin off that stuff for the first few days..you cant really concentrate, but its great when your sniffin...

 

If interested.... here is an ebay link for 3 18" OEM Max wheels

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/3-NIS...70751689QQrdZ1