Hello;

I'd like to hear from the 3 piece wheel owners out there.

I just came back from an HRE dealer who mentioned that while HRE has high quality eventually most 3 piece wheels will leak.

What has been your experience. How much of a repair hassle is it.

Upgrade fever has struck.

Thanks!

 

Regardless of HRE, all of my wheels I had in the past leaked air. I check air on my tires once every 2 weeks. I wouldn't worry too much about this.

 

Any 3-piece wheel has the potential to leak after being mounted by a shop that doesn't know how to handle a 3-piece wheel and nicks the silicone seal w/the spoons. That said, I've had several sets of 3-piece wheels and none of them have leaked, but I had a leak in a...believe-it-or-not...1-piece wheel. It was a cast wheel from a major brand. There was a bubble in the casting and it'd been masked by Chroming. About 6 months into usage, the air broke through the chrome plating and the wheel leaked. Pretty unusual I think.

 

3 piece wheels NEEDS to be serviced periodically. i run them on track and every year they go back to fikse for magnaflux and rebuilt just in case.

 

We have sold tons of 3 piece wheels over the last 5 years, esp lots of HREs, and I can't think of one occasion where the wheels were leaking after time. There were some cases of leakage when the wheels were new, for example a cracked valve stem or bad seal to begin with, or seal punctured during installation, but as far as I have seen they are reliable as any other wheel can be.

If the seal does leak, it's just a matter of taking off the tires and re-applying silicon. It needs to dry about a day after application before you can mount a tire, but thats really it. Since you are very close to HRE I would say it would be less of a hassle for you since you wouldn't even have to ship the wheels over for repair, just drive them over.

 

Are you saying you never lost 3-5psi in a month or two?

 

rubber expansion and contraction can result such loss in tire pressure during temperature changes. the tire under these temp changes can lose air no matter the wheel it is mounted on

to answer the original question....have owned many 3 piece rims for a number of years now (12?) and not once have I had a wheel that leaked at the stem or the silicone seal. very simple fix if it did happen

 

Thanks for the replies!

It looks like you guys have had pretty good luck.

On to the fun part - the chase, which ones will it be?

Thanks Again!

KMO

 

Why don't you join us for the TFT tomorrow so you can see variety of wheels.

 

RT7,

Really like to join you but it Looks like I missed it.

What / where is TFT?

Thanks