Recently I needed some new tires. I was also considering a small "wheel project" . I found 1 of our supporting vendors had a set of '02 stock painted thin spokes with nearly new Khumos already mounted at a very resonable price. Bought them and had them shipped.I installed them the next day...Thank Heaven!! While stacking my old tire/wheel combos in the storage shed, I noticed 1 of the rear wheels had a 3 inch crack where the spoke meets the rim. Makes me wonder how long it's been there and how many more miles before it would have completely broken through. Anyone else experience this or heard of this happening???

 

I've heard of this happening several times. It always seems it is the 2000 and up thin spoke wheels. I have a 98 with wagon wheels, think I will stick with those.

Have you had an accident or hit a curb?

 

Was the crack on the outer part(facing out) of the wheel or the inside part towards the inner section of the wheel?

 

The crack is on the outside of the spoke where it joins the outer rim. From the outside, I can see half of the outer "face" of the spoke is cracked. The crack continues around the spoke to the inside. Sorry I can't get a good pic. If I do, I'll be sure to post it later.

 

Last week I found out I too have a cracked rim. For a few days now, I'd not been able to keep air in my front right tire. I didn't see anything that had been in the tire, so I took it to a tire & wheel shop. They took the tire off and said my wheel was cracked and this was pushing on the tire.

 

Interesting, I just left the Chevy dealership 30 minutes ago after having my Z06 serviced and a fellow with an '01 Vette with polished OEM wheels was telling me that his rears cracked just like you described. Sounds a little curious to me

 

Have heard of other forum member's having this problem too. Glad you found it before the crack got worse and the wheel failed.

 

you guys are making me nervous...gonna go check mine

 

I have the same problem. I went to the dealership last Fri. and they are reluctantly ordering me a new wheel right now. When I showed it to the guy he started inspecting the wheel and tires and rocker panel for damages but there was nothing except a mark where a wheel weight used to be and he began to try and tell me that since I had someone other than the dealership take the tire off of the wheel that they may have cracked the wheel because the run flat sidewalls are soooooo hard that if it isn't done just right they can damage the wheel. So I proceded to tell him that it is a good year tire and a I took it to a Good year service center to be patched and if a friggin rubber tire can crack one of the spokes on the wheel and not leave a single mark on the rest of the wheel we have a much more serious problem. So he then retreated and got his boss in on the action and the boss came and rigorously inspected my tires (thank god I have not been burning out) and said he had never seen or heard of such a thing before but he would cover it for me. I was happy he was covering it (as he certainly should) but was pissed that they tryed to hard to find a reason not to cover it. I mean, even if I decided to sit and burn the tires off in the parking lot the wheel should not be cracking on the damn thing.

Sorry about the rant, but I work for a service company and poor service and lame excuses **** me off pretty quickly.