Hello, I’m new to the forum. I own a 2019 Z06. It has 15,000 miles on it. Took it to the dealership today because I was experiencing some vibration. Some of my Vette friends said they have had the same issue and the dealership has drained their transmission fluid, something about living in a high humidity state. Anyhow, I was told by the dealership that I have FOUR bent rims. What the heck?!? They also stated there is no visual physical damage that they could see like if I had hit a pot hole or curb or run over a log (lots of log trucks in Georgia). They submitted a claim to GM for Warrenty but GM denied the claim. What do you recommend I do? Is there any recourse? I’ve never had any bent rims in my car owning life. This doesn’t make sense to me. I’m looking at thousands of dollars to replace rims on a new vehicle. What junk!!

 

Buy some forged wheels . Plenty of threads in this forum.

 

Sorry to hear about your misfortune. I would strongly recommend you go over to the C7 General Forum and search for the thread "C7 bent/cracked wheel roll call". Read through that thread. There is a lot of good info there. Post up your problem there. Also, send a Private Message to @Scudz who started that thread. He has an amazing story you need to hear. He can give you some good advice on how you can move forward.

 

Just curious how long you’ve had the car. This is sadly a fairly common problem with the C7 Z06 wheels. It seems to be much more prevalent in states like those in the Northeast it’s plentiful amounts of gnarly potholes and old unsophisticated railroad crossings.

Should GM and Tadge & Company step forward and do the right thing? Without question. Unfortunately he’s now had plenty of time and opportunity to do so and quite simply will likely never stand behind his product. Can’t help but wonder what lovely little gift bags he’s hidd n in the C8 and or the C8 Z’s. Time will tell.

Had a similar problem with a Lexus tranny. They knew full well they were all defective. After 6 months of fighting every Tom, Dick, and Harry an camping out for a couple hours in Lexus USA headquarters, they agreed to give us a fully reconditioned tranny but made us pay $1100 in mechanics fees.

So, like others on here, keep fighting the good fight, but don’t lose sight of the fact that it could have many more serious drivetrain issues like the C6 427’s and of course there are some A8 overheating issues on the early A8 C7 Z cars. But all in all these are pretty amazing high performance cars. Hopefully four real forged wheels, not spin forged, will be the extent of your Z problems and maybe some day Tadge will develop a moral compass.

I would only add that our 2017 Z07 package car has PSS tires and 11,000 miles, mostly in SoCal. Knock on wood, the car rides smooth as glass and literally never loses even 1 psi of tire pressure. Maybe we are just lucky? Anyway, if the wheels do go South, we love the overall Z performance far too much to not go forged.

Good luck on your decisions...

 

Thank you for your response. My car is a 2019 Z06. Has 15,600 miles. I live in Georgia. No potholes no aggressive driving, nothing. I’m pretty pissed off about this. I have been a loyal GM girl forever. My father worked for and retired from “Oldsmobile”. My first car was a Cutlass Supreme. I love my Z06 but I’m not about to go broke replacing defective rims.

 

Pretty much what all of us do is bite the bullet and get forged rims. It's really the only way to be sure.

 

You can have the wheels repaired. Don’t recommend it, but that’s an option. You can buy 4 new wheels from GM and possibly bend/crack them again. You can buy forged wheels and not have any problems, but you will have to hand over a pretty penny. Here’s a pic of mine with forged wheels signature forged 19/20

 

Sadly this is a fact of life with the C7 Z06 wheels. As noted above there are plenty of posts on this subject, and plenty of forged wheel sellers who are approved vendors here. Worth a look. On my 2016 Z06 with 20k miles I recently replaced tires (switched to the A/S 3+ ZP all seasons). Had them done at a tire shop with both a Hunter Road Force Elite balancer and a Hunter Revolution tire changer to minimize the risk of damage from changing out notoriously stiff and difficult to mount run flats. The shop told me that I had had two slightly bent rims on the right side but they were able to balance them out fine with a little added weight and I can feel no vibrations from the wheels.You might talk with a high quality tire shop (one with the above equipment and experience with large low profile tires) to see if they might be able to make your wheels livable. I contacted Hunter via their website and one of their reps contacted me with the locations of several tire shops with Revolution machines (Their website has a dealer locator tab for Road Force balancers but none for the Revolution). Having said that however, if I ever have seriously bent or cracked rims at a later time I will likely head for the forged wheel world despite the cost. --Bob

 

Sorry to hear about 4 wheels are now gone.
we do offer OE Style Full Forged Wheels which are currently on Sale until Monday 7/6.
We offer the Grandsport, Z06 and ZR1 style.
We are also offering Free Ceramic Coating Automatically on the orders and free shipping.

https://motorsportsla.com/collections/oe-forged-wheels

 

looks like it is not a matter of if but when with bent/cracked c7z wheels.....

 

I also have been down the bent-wheel road. Was following an old "farm truck" loaded high with end pieces from a sawmill. These are the ends cut off mill sawed hard wood boards and they make really great firewood. The truck hit an expansion joint on a bridge and started shedding pieces of firewood. I dodged them all but one. I ran over a single One Inch high piece of hardwood and been both passenger side rims. A long talk with my Vette Tech and he finally made great sense. Even if I was able to get GM to replace the rims, they would be the exact same rims that were on the Vette already. I'd probably just bend them again sooner or later.

So I bit the bullet and bought a set of 4 forged rims that are still perfect after two years of really rough winter damaged roads in WV. Bite the bullet Fast Mama and buy some forged rims. Even if you win from GM, you will still loose.

 

Even though the wheels are well known to be inferior, General Motors will just claim that you hit a big pothole or something and they will deny your claim anyway.
Honestly, I would not even try to hold General Motors accountable if these failures were due to extreme road hazards, but these failures are too common.

 

At least you have a reason. Most of them bend having never hit anything other than expansion joints. Still...a 1" board shouldn't be a wheel killer.

The worst obstacle I have ever hit with a vehicle as in Birmingham AL. I 20 was under construction, and we were driving through on a Sunday with no workers. There was a shift in the street level that went up 4-1/2" in a 55mph section...no signs, no warning, and it went across all 3 lanes. We were in an RV pulling a Range Rover, and I managed to slow to about 50 before hitting the lift. OMG...we all plastered to the ceiling and had to replace most of the storage bins. But we made it through undamaged. For the next 5 miles cars were littered on both sides of the Freeway changing tires...most with multiple flats.

Had I been driving the Z, I would have totaled the car! It was that bad. Of course, with the brakes this car has I probably could have stopped before reaching the lift...and been rear ended. Either way it would have been bad...but still better knowing "I" hit something, rather than these POS wheels bending for no good reason.

 

47K miles and zero bent rims.

1) Replace runflats
2) Never drive in any mode except comfort on the street

Problem solved.

 

Or....

....is it.

Give it time grasshopper. Give it time!

 

Sorry to hear of all 4 wheels being bent. I have replaced 3 on my 15 A8 Z. You situation does have a silver lining. Mine were bent one-at-a-time and I could not justify 4 new forged wheels for 1 bent OEM wheel each time. Now that I've replaced 3 total on separate occurrences, I wish I had bought a new set of forged on the first bent OEM wheel. If I was in your position, I could easily justify the new set of forged from a purely practical AND financial position. I still drive the car often but I only drive on certain roads; even only in certain lanes on the interstate in areas where I'm familiar with the ground swell bumps. I've passed on many long road trips due to fear of the marshmallow wheels freaking out at what most vehicles handle without any issues. I watch Priuses take on the bumps with ease as I wish I could do the same. (until I feel the aspects of the car that GM did right for us, and, for a bargain) They will rock and roll!

It sucks that GM let us down on these POS wheels, but, you have the opportunity to be done with the issue in one occurrence.

 

Could be. That was 2 different Z06’s by the way, 2016 and 2019. Got rid of the runflats ASAP. I do run 18” forged at VIR though. No reason to tempt fate.

 

which tires did you switch to?

 

Thanks for all the responses. Ok....I’ve learned that if I’m going to replace all 4 I should replace with forged. I’m not looking to take out a second mortgage, however, can someone suggest where I begin? I’m definitely illiterate when it comes to rims.

 

I drive mine in touring mode 100% of the time and still ended up with two cracked rims in the rear.