Ok, so they didnt ruin my car- but I've got something funky going on here and its definitely related to the new wheels somehow.

Got my 08 997 turbo tuned with a host of upgrades and back about a week ago. We put h&r springs and front/rear sway bars on it, as well as a brand new set of 360 forged concave ten wheels. They are 20" with Hancook Venus v12 evo tires all around. 245s in the front and 305 in the rear.

Originally, I thought the shop didn't setup the suspension and/or alignment correctly since the car handled liked a boat when I got it back. Not nearly as crisp on turn in, felt floaty, and if I rocked the wheel back and forth quickly at about 40 mph, the front tires would literally start to wash out.

Fast forward a couple days, realize that 3/4 of these craptastic $6000 wheels are slowly leaking air through the seam between the two halves of the rim.

360 forged tells me they'll repair them, but I'm responsible for paying shipping back and forth. Thanks 360!

The thing is, put the oem wheels back on the car for the first time since the suspensions been installed, and the car feels wayyyyyyy better. The suspension upgrade actually did help, but the wheels (or tires?) feel so bad it completely undoes any improvement from the new suspension.

What am I missing here? Did 360 build me a set of wheels "specific" for my turbo that are so "off" in their specs that this is the result? Do I need to put more than 100 miles on the tires before they give up their floppiness? Does the +1 size over the stock 19's kill it? When I had my gallardomI put 20" concave adv wheels on it, no problems at all

Thanks for any insight guys

 

I don't know if this helps, but when I first got my car, it came with 3 piece 20s. The tires were 235 in the front and 305 in the back. Now I run 245 in the front and 325 in the back. I think 245 and 305 is off in sense of the differential. Don't know if that would cause your steering issues.

 

Got me worried now... I just ordered the MB5 from 360. Can I ask where did you have your tires mounted?

 

I had the tires mounted by a reputable shop here in Atlanta, I was standing right behind the tech when they were mounting them, and I am confident it was not "user error" that caused the leaky beads. The wheels all had runout from the get go too, which is a shame for such an expensive set of wheels - but with some balancing they were able to zero the wheels out all around on their hunter gps machine.

 

For that price it's pretty poor customer service to let the customer pay the shipping. Hope it all works out in the end!

 

tell me about it, but my primary concern is just having these stupid expensive wheels at least usable :/

 

I had same problem with their wheels , i just sold them and went with HRE . Never had a problem 6 sets later . Also reason to buy from a reputable vendor these guys have an insane history. why risk it ?

Also i think your specs on wheels also wrong you need 325 rear exactly what a few guys above mentioned. Good luck sorry you in this position .

 

I'll give you my 2 cents: My car is completely stock. I upgraded to the same Hankook's when I needed my first set of tires after buying the car. I had them on my previous car (SL 65) no issues. I did notice that the car felt "floaty" for the first 500 miles or so and then settled in. They've lasted now 10K miles and I've been totally satisfied with them. So it could be that?? Sorry to hear about your experience. These sort of stories are always what prevent me from doing upgrades and mods to my car...

 

that's reassuring actually, because a couple of the guys I work with also have the Hankooks, and I had them on my 996 Turbo with no similar problems. But these feel way worse.

The tuning company also said to let the tires break in a bit and it will get better, Im just reluctant to believe that since nobody here (and myself) never had that problem with the V12 Evo's even when brand new.

I hope that is indeed the problem though!

Thanks to everybody so far

 

new tires will feel dodgy for a while. But leaky new wheels? thats jacked up its going to cost you money to fix if you purchased them new direct.

 

You also need to get a copy of the alignment specs for us to look at. The wheel issue needs to be addressed by 360 with no charge to you. Good luck!

 

I believe we spoke about this on the phone. I believe you purchase these wheels from WB. I do not know if they sold you the tires or not , but if a shop does not reverse mount these wheels or a shop does not know how to mount Multi pc wheels , it's very possible for them to break the seal while mounting with the mounting bar. I remember you just called the office and i told you we would be glad to dismount your wheels re-seal the wheels and remount and balance your wheels for you at our cost , if you paid for the shipping. We have no control who mounted those tires , but since your a Forged DST. customer we are willing to help you.

The specs on the wheels are 100% correct , the tire size that your using in the rear is incorrect, you should be running the 325-25-20.

We are here to help you fix the issue , let me know when your ready.

 

997TT oem tire size ratio (235/35 and 305/30) should be altered no more than 5%...or you will end up burning your front differential...check your wheel off sets front and rear (mostly front) to make sure it is correct.Usually a wrong front off set gives you the feeling that front end is hanging left and right on a straight line...finally check tire pressures for over pressure...

 

That is a good point. What are the wheel offsets? From the pics in your other thread I cant tell whether they are significantly off, but the difference in tire size means that you have more meat in the fronts and less meat (profile height) in the rears...

 

Forged DST, yes I did call earlier this week. The guys who installed the wheels work next door to our shop here in Atlanta and are very familiar with mounting/balancing with 3 pc wheels. I've seen countless Porsche's, Ferrari's, Bentley's etc in and out of their place. The owner used to work for Butler Tire here in ATL before splitting 10 years ago to open his own shop. Undoubtedly a pro.

With the wheels sitting at their shop after I had them taken off the car, I've been by a couple times where they showed me a number of things done wrong,

1) missing bolt behind valve stem on each wheel
2) all the bolts used are non automotive grade 8.8's
3) all the bolts are not torqued even close to the same amount. Some of the bolts were so loose it took next to no force to un-do them
4) Dunked in water, 3 of the 4 wheels will bubble in a couple different places - all bubbled from the area surrounding the missing bolt hole
5) They Leak air, the right front considerably worse than others.
4) the wheels all had a bit of wobble to them, visible when on the balancing machine without a tire on it. They said this is a somewhat acceptable norm for 3 piece wheels so we'll at least ignore this one

I do really appreciate the fact that you're willing to re-build them for me seeing as its an expensive set of brand new wheels and my next best option is to pay somebody locally to do it for $500.

Will you re-build them with automotive grade bolts and ensure that they're re-done the way anybody should expect them in the first place?

If so, and if it's done within a reasonable period of time, I'm happy to eat the couple hundred bucks in shipping to get them there and back. Even though I don't believe it should be my responsibility to pay, I understand sh*t happens. I own an online business distributing high end automotive headlight parts. So thank you for taking care of your customer-

....

In regards to my question about the awful downgrade in handling compared to the stock wheels, any recommendations there? Can you pull up the spec's built into these wheels offset wise?

Thanks again