Thomas
Anderson,#2Consumer Comment
Mon, March 19, 2007
My father used to tell me to drive a car the way it came from the factory, or don't buy it, because the aftermarket parts were never as good as the factory parts and I was asking for trouble if I used aftermarket parts. It has proven to be good advice for those of us who do not want the kind of excitement you just had. Yes, factory steel wheels are ugly and uncool. Too true. They usually will also be safer and more durable than aluminum wheels. That said, I have factory AL wheels on an F150, but you take a used truck the way you get it when the price is right. I suspect your broken wheels were some aluminum alloy. Steel has an endurance limit meaning that if steel is stressed below its endurance limit it will never fail. But aluminum has no endurance limit and also AL does not absorb impact energy well. This is why turbofan engines do not rely on aluminum casings for containment of failed blades, and tanks do not use AL armor. I doubt you can get enough energy into aluminum to make the forging process produce as robust an improvement as is possible with forged steel and titanium. Then too, how do you know that proper engineering analysis was done on those wheels to ensure they were structurally adequate and had no stress concentrations in critical locations? I have seen some really shoddy attempts at mechanical design.
Jon
madison,#3Author of original report
Mon, March 19, 2007
I can't fault Wheel Max? Are you kidding me? I have been building and racing cars for over 20 years. I have seen many, many rims damaged from wear and abuse but NEVER have I seen a rim shatter like this one has. I have spoken with experts, foundry specialists, who work with metals, and they have said that the rim was improperly forged. I understand that errors can be made. My problem with Wheel Max is there un-willingness to stand behind the product that they sell and their cavalier "oh well" attitude towards a customer that could have been injured due to the failure of that products failure. Look when Ro-ja had some rims fail on Suburu's a few years ago they quickly sent the vehicle owners new rims with apologies. Thye did not try to blame the vehicle owners. They did not say "too bad". They provided customer service and stood behind the product. Wheel Max did not. Yes, I can exactly blame Wheel Max.
Eddie
Miami,#4UPDATE EX-employee responds
Sat, March 17, 2007
I used to work in the customer service department. I understand that you feel Wheelmax had an inferior product, but there are some other things to look at besides the fact that they sold you wheels for very cheap. First, I guarentee you the wheels were banged up a few times before it "shattered" on you, and hitting metal over and over and over again is going to cause it to lose it's shape a little, ultimately at some point to break it completely. Second, you owned the product for over 2 years, and unless you saw a lifetime warranty that i was never given, you're way past your warranty period. Furthermore, you have no proof that the accident occured soley on behalf of the rim, and that is your biggest obstacle. Just like it's the district attorney's job to prove someone committed a crime, it's your job to prove the accident arose from the failure of the rim. If everyone just started calling up wheelmax saying that the rim spontaneously failed on them and that they had to replace them or give them back their money, Wheelmax wouldn't be in business, they'd be in collection! I don't work for wheelmax anymore, but they are a good company. They used to have wacky rules for customer service, but while i was there, we tried to make it a more customer friendly situation, sorry your's wasn't the case.