10 GT3

Well, I had a minor incident with a curb a couple of weeks ago. It wasn't bad, in fact it was very hard to see. Being a new car, I decided to just get the wheel refinished. My dealer said no problem and they even do wheel repair in house.

Attempt 1: Dealer tried to refinish the wheel. No problem with the scrape, but could not match the new Anthracite (dark gray) wheel paint. So they sent the wheel out to a shop to have it refinished.

Attempt 2: The wheel shop day crew re-painted the wheel and again didn't get the color right. So they had the night crew, which is better, re-paint it again.

Attempt 3: This time the color was right. There was another problem though, they didn't mask off the center of the wheel and painted where the center lock goes. Due to the high torque of the nut, this area is bare metal.

Attempt 4: They didn't want to wait 24 hours for the paint stripper to remove all the paint, so they put the wheel on a lay to shave the paint off. On the lay, they didn't realize the center of the wheel has a curve and accidentally cut into the wheel. This basically destroyed the wheel.

Guess how many GT3 center lock wheels are in the US at Porsche's part warehouses?

zero

Guess how many GT3 center lock wheels are in inventory in Germany?

also zero

So my dealer talked to Porsche in Germany and they pulled a wheel from production. Although GT3 production for the US for 2010 is complete, they are still building a few for other countries. They pulled a wheel for a car on the production line, boxed it and air freighted it to the US. It took about a week to get here and get through customs. The total cost to the wheel refinishing company, something on the north side of $2K. My cost: $0. Finding out I am the first person in the world to get a replacement center lock wheel: priceless.

The learning lesson from this is be very careful with those center lock wheels.

mdrums

Oh WOW....imagine the face of the of the owner of the wheel refinishing company? Glad it worked out for you. Your dealer is to be comended for steppingup and doing the right thing. Not sure how many would have gone to bat like this with Germany.

Nizer

Kudos to the refinisher for doing the right thing (after doing the wrong thing).

Unitah

lay? or lathe?

Carrera GT

These mistakes are so patently obvious, so predictable and so easily avoided. Is there no professional left in the auto industry these days?!

Refinish curb rash -- better get the color match right.

Mask the working surfaces of a wheel (the hub face and the wheel nut location(s.)

Haste makes waste -- always mask and strip overspray. Painters are not machinists. Wheels are such precise products, there's no room to machine the paint off the surface in any case. Pathetic.

Specifications -- A professional machinist could probably burnish the working surface to ensure it was returned to specifications by confirming tool set up with a second specimen so that the machine work (which should have been entirely avoidable) is done to specifications, not to approximation. After all,it's not as if the locating surface of the nut is the alignment of the wheel (that's the axle studs) and the nut will wear the wheel surface over time, so their surfaces will change, but hell, it's just absurd to get into this mess in the first place.

axhoaxho

Thanks for sharing, I will be extra careful with my wheels now.

May I ask if you know what is the retail price of the wheel (front and rear)?

Regards,

Carrera GT

RS wheels in silver are $1300 front and $1800 rear. I believe "list" is around $2100, but there's margin there for dealer parts to discount to only semi-exorbitant prices.

tcsracing1

shelf those stockers and buy BBS

axhoaxho

Thanks.

fun2k

well i got my one of my rear wheels replaced by dealer cuz there was some noise coming from it when cornering.... Thats in addition to fixing the front rotors(both replaced cuz they were unbalanced from factory)plus a few other other things like pcm which surprisingly isnt updating and crashing so waiting for a replacement....honestly speaking porsche QC sucks more than any other jap or german car ive owned.ive even had to put back on the rubber air duct in the engine lid by hand.in my old 997tt more than half of the engine lid rubber seal was not glued at all and just hanging there.

now i dont know if its my bad luck or they just hate me but if i was head of porche,first thing id do is fire the QC people.i dont see how these simple things can pass quality control so easily.

still im not complainin,i got new rim,new pcm(not yet),new brakes and free car wash everytime i visit them
oh and the best thing,service centre is less than 10min from my place and there service is excellent.

10 GT3

Dealer cost on a single 19x12 GT3 rear is just over $1500 ea. Retails around $2K.

Cost of the air freight from Germany was $520.

brim

Imagine the look on the guys face who got the new GT3 with only 3 wheels!!

10 GT3

I am sure they won't deliver a 3 wheel GT3. If the owner of that car is out there, I am siorry you will have to wait a little longer. It is worth the wait.

gmgracing

Gents

As an option we have centerlock wheels in stock that are made to TUV specs

This is the GMG Mono 19 19x9 and 19x12

You can see the wheels on our website www.gmgracing.com


If you need more info please dont hesitate to contact me directly.


fabryce@gmgracing.com