RJFabCab

It all started with a slow leak in the left rear.

I wanted to take off the wheel to get a good look at the tire... so I went and grabbed my trusty Craftsman aluminum "race" jack only to find that it had given up the ghost! The jack blew a leak and spewed oil all over the place.

Cool. No prob. Just grab another jack... I have plenty of them sitting around. I finally get the wheel off and find a little pecker nail in the center of the tread.

Oh yeah... and I found something else, too.

Great. I already had one rear inner rim warrantied due to cracking. I must say that this has been pretty disappointing. I only tracked this set once. These rims really only see street duty.

DanH

And there was everyone telling me to buy Fikse as they are so much stronger than HREs!

Not good!

RJFabCab

No rim is immune to stress, but I did my homework and talked to lots of folks... and that's why I went with Fikse. Race proven rims... that's what I was going for.

Here are some old pics of my previously repaired rim. Fikse said that there was a "bad batch of aluminum" that went through. Sure. Ok. It's still disappointing, and it's still a disaster waiting to happen.

RJFabCab

Anyone know of any OEM wheel failures?

My '02 Carrera 5-spokes have been bulletproof... and I tracked the p*ss out of them with R-tires!

NelsonF

Unfortunately, the same rim cracking incident happened to me with Fikse's, twice. Fikse was very responsive and apparently was encountering a run of defective rim halves. After 2 tries to fix finally corrected the issue. I've subsequently used Fikse FM10's on my 01 TT w/ GT700 mods with no problems. I have never had a problem with OEM wheels.

TT Surgeon

Never heard of an oem wheel failing, sucks man. Good thing you found out like this.

mds

No, the OEM's do seem nearly bulletproof. In fact they may be stronger than the suspension. I have seen cases where the suspension had been damaged but the wheels were totally OK.

geoffucla

Oh man, RJ, consider yourself lucky that you found that before it failed!

Geoff.

RJFabCab

Yeah, talk about frightening. I picked up the first cracked rim when I was putting on my track wheels.

This one I pick up while investigating a slow leak.

BTW, Chris, I've been following the transformation of your C4 into ONE BAD MACHINE!

RJFabCab

Lucky is right! Even a blowout on the freeway could be disastrous! MSRH sounds like it was tons of fun...

roberga

when did you have them made? I have a set built last March

rockitman

and Kinesis for that matter...hmmm

Z06 convert

Hi Gang!

A couple months ago I had Kineses request the rears off my Turbo. I think it was the bolts they replaced.

I plan to run the stock wheels on my GT2 with Kumho 710's for auto-X and maybe time trials.

Anyone have anythoughts on this?

Thanks for any imput! Steve

RJFabCab

They were made in July 2003. The first rim was actually repaired in April '05.

Service from Wheel Enhancement has been excellent in facilitating repairs from Fikse. I spoke with Fikse today and there apparently was a change in ithe process of inner rim construction about 2 years ago... reportedly it's all in-house construction now (and it wasn't before? ).

Fikse has actually requested that all 4 wheels be sent back to them... I think they're going to replace the inner rims on all 4 wheels.

Safety and peace of mind is what I'm after!

Mr. C4

In most cases with weightloss rims comes weak material as a bonus.

Ciao,

Johannes E.

GT3 CS