I was switching the wheels on my car back to my HRE 542Rs and removing the Gemballa Competition 18s. While removing the left rear wheel, I found that one of the spokes was cracked -- all the way through!

WTF? How does that happen? I have hit nothing. The only thing ever done to that wheel was to have the lip re-polished after getting slightly scraped. Since then, it has been balanced twice, and no one has said anything about the center having any damage.

How can a wheel center crack without the car hitting something and without there being any damage to the rim?

 

I have no idea of how that happened, just be thankful that you discovered under these circumstances. Could've been a whole lot worse.

 

You should write Gemballa and inform them on what you have found. Demand a new replacement of all four rims because it's more than likely those rims are from the same lot. I suspect if you were to take them to a place to have them Xrayed, you would probably find all the rest of the rims are just as dangerous. In fact, I would to keep the documentation to prove it because from what I've heard, Gemballa isn't a straight up company when it comes to defective products. Also threaten with the fact that you will report it to the NHTSA and do it anyways.

NHTSA - Office of Defects Investigation

 

i've actually seen this happen a few times

 

We see this all the time. You may have hit something at one point that started a stress crack that grew into this. You really don't have to hit something that hard to start the damage . I've seen wheels broken in several places without any damage to the tires from potholes that weren't big enough to pay much attention to. Some cars distribute the force of an impact to the wheel differently than others.

The best thing to do is have the mfgr. look at them. They can tell you if the break was a result of road hazard or defect because they know the telltale signs.

 

Glad that neither you nor your car were hurt.

 

call Gemballa... im assuming that being who they are they will take care of you...

 

At least you'd like to think so... That one Gemballa horror story just really hurt thier over-all good name.

TTRon

 

If you don't send them back at least get the remaining ones Xrayed. Wheels do see lots of stress on high performance vehicles. Racing teams pay a lot of attention to thier wheels.

But, it isn't necessary to hit anything for a wheel problem to show up. Could be metallurgy, manufacturing, mounting, etc. or a combination of the above.

 

I'm glad that you are okay and nothing worse happened. Watch out, those wheels can set fire!!

 

Gemballa does not take care of its customers...thats why dont deal with them