chris walrod

Just an interesting thread

Scott 1996 993c2

Chris -

Interesting . . . thanks for sharing the info brother. I've checked out alot of HRE's in my search for wheels . . . something to definitely take into consideration.

Scott

Mark in Baltimore

HRE thread on the Audi Forum.

Lagavulin

It turn out the racing 'ban' was bogus (..post #61):

https://rennlist.com/forums/showthre...=208424&page=5

Mark in Baltimore

Thanks for the update.

garychios

Well, It looks like those wheels fail either way. Not a good indication of their quality. I would stick to a more solid lite weight wheel like a Volk TE37 which is light and forged one piece.

Lagavulin

According to the various sources within the thread, it appears that NO wheel is immune from breakage due to stresses induced while racing; that includes BBS, Fikse, Forgeline, etc. Continuing, all race teams perform visual checks along with magnafluxing to catch a problem before it becomes catastrophic.

Interesting too, it is recommended not to powdercoat wheels since it will tend to visually mask potential problems; subsequently, anodizing is the preferred color-change choice for a racing wheel.

Lots of good info in that thread.

garychios

Never ever seen a volk fail and my Jap buddies on the other side play drifting games on a weekly basis. I also have first hand experience on a volk te37 and I have played with Kinesis etc. It is built way stonger than the forged HRE / kinesis etc. Problem is, they are not as pretty and can be a bit heavier that those 3 piece beauties.

Steve Weiner-Rennsport Systems

VERY true words and IMHO, all wheels that have been used for track events for some time should be Zyglow'ed or X-ray'ed for cracks every 12-18 months. We are seeing more cracking in wheels that ever before and that includes the Fuchs, as well.

We carefully inspect all race car wheels after every event and crack-test every 16 months.

Magnafluxing is only for ferrous (steel) parts.

Modern race tires (DOT & slicks) are placing loads on all these wheels that they were never designed for, given the need for lightness.

CentralCoastC4S

OK, you guys made me nervous about my HRE's, I pulled the right rear to check for corrosion (living near the ocean, I figured I'd better check). Here's what it looked like:
Not that much corrosion but so dirty I couldn't really tell. So, I cleaned it up and sprayed it with POR-15 clear. A waste of time? Maybe, looks a bit better though.
The car has seen track time with these wheels so I figured it couldn't hurt to clean them up and try to keep corrosion to a minium.
After:

jonathank2000

Bruce,
I wouldn't pay too much attention to the politics behind the bogus ban....

Give HRE a call if you have any questions at all. I must have called them at least a dozen times before and after I bought mine. They have a different breed of customer service than the average wheel company. No affiliation, blah, blah, blah.....

CentralCoastC4S

Thanks Jonathan, I got the feeling as I worked with the wheels that they are
really quite substantial. Seems like it would take a lot to get into trouble with them, not impossible but it would take some work. I've always thought they
were strong, good looking wheels. I'll continue to use them. I will say that
cleaning the inside of the wheels made me feel a bit better about the condition of the wheel.

Bull

As Steve said, no matter what brand of wheel is being tracked, they need to be checked regularly.

We have had two incidents of wheel failure in the past year at track events, both 3 piece wheels, one Fikse and one Kinesis. In these cases the wheel looked normal from the outside....however, the center bolts had sheared off at the inside of the wheel and the nuts were missing. A check of the other wheels on these two cars found other wheels with a few sheared bolts, which had not yet failed. At one of the events, we found another participant in the paddock with Fikse wheels where bolts had begun to shear off on the inside.

Check your wheels regularly!

jonathank2000

Great wheels by the way, the 542R was my second choice!