AMGDAN

I have recently started to notice, once the rain started to pick up in Seattle, that I have some significant steering wheel vibrations, when I drove in moderate rain.
I have done a little research and I found out that that all the reverse lip wheels have these problems. This is due to water retention, which is an inherent problem in all wheels of this design. The water tends to collect in the concave portion between the rims when it rains. When driving past 65+ mph when it is raining hard, the centrifugal forces do not allow the water to escape and I have a significant wheel imbalance, and hence steering wheel vibration.
So all the wheels that HRE carries with an exception to 540 Series & Competition series will experience this problem.
The HRE fix is to slow down, when is raining hard.
I thought I should share my little experience with you guys.
Dan

AMG_55

never happened 2 me, up to 90-100 mph
not in heavy rain though, but for sure 65-70 in heavy rain

Dozer42

Yep, this is quite common with all 2 and 3-piece wheels I've heard.

Shocked the hell out of me when my Lexus SC430 virtually shook itself apart in the rain above 60mph or so. $5000+ on Maya TS-2 3-piece wheels so I could almost kill myself.

Never again, sticking to 1-piece wheels from now on.

For god's sake, for all the crap the government outlaws (which I'm against), you'd think they'd hear about this.

Insanely unsafe in the rain.

W0n6_3d4n

I have 3 piece but i don't experience any of that.

jmejones

Never had the problem with my HREs

nlpamg

woah, I just experienced that same issue last week!

I noticed while washing my car this weekend that my wheels (3-piece) retained water inside... Last week when it was raining, I was getting vibrations at around 80mph on the same road that is pretty smooth when it's dry... Makes sense now.

psk145

I believe its only a problem on the wheels with the reverse lip (R).

Ynot

I agree, I have 3-piece racing harts for eight years now, it's been through heavy rain and snow with no problems.

Dozer42

Here's some threads on it, very very common problem I'm afraid. Many are with HREs.

http://www.clublexus.com/forums/showthread.php?t=139637
http://www.clublexus.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24213
http://www.clublexus.com/forums/showthread.php?t=153076

chitownc32

This is so true. I was driving home form work one night in the rain and I was driving about 80 and the whole car was shaking. I was like wtf. I pulled over to see if I ran over a pothole or something, but it was not the case. Now that I read this post it has to be because of the hre's. That fu*king sucks. $5,000 wheels that are crap in the rain.

dsb

These are not HRE's, but is this the area you are talking about? Also, how do you know if something has a "reversed lip"? Do they normally post info on that or is it something you inquire?

W0n6_3d4n

I notice a water accumulation on the above pic after each car wash but the water will be fully dissipated once the car has been driven around.

AMGDAN

Dsb,
You are right. This is the area implicated in the unbalance of the wheels during heavy rain.
I wish I knew more about the "reverse lip". When I bought my HRE's, I knew that they are very popular, have a nice lip and they are a 3-piece wheel.

platinumsc

Yeah, this happens with a lot of multipiece wheels. Not too bad on my Maya's on the coupe...most of the water comes out but a little stays. I also am getting 1 piece wheels for my next car. Multi piece are too high maintenance.

dsb

Why do you say that? Is it simply because it's harder to clean or is there other reasons? Thanks in advance.

zaint10

Now I'm not so sure if i should get my wheels with R lips....

steve-p

Any vibration isn't just a nuisance, it's putting extra stress and wear on all the suspension components.

nlpamg

I took these pics last week in CA. We had light rain and here is a picture of the water retained inside my wheels after driving for about 40m inside a dry parking structure.

I never knew about this water retention on 3-piece wheels...

CLKonDUBS

Most of these wheels are "reversed lips". If you do not have a step lip on a 3pc wheel then your wheel is a "reversed lip" wheel. Those are the only 2 "lips" you can get on a wheel..Correct me if I'm wrong but here is a site that carries 3pc wheels that only shows "reversed lip" and "step lip".
I've had a 3pc wheel but they suck, kept on getting bent over the littlest bumps that you would think 5k wheels would hold up (trust me I drive very careful) but now i'm back to my 1pc wheel that should last a while with no probs.

J-line wheels

dsb

So what do you do when you wash the car?!
I assume you get the same effect because of the water and brake dust.

Do you take the time to soak it up with a towel?

CLKonDUBS

After washing/cleaning my car water tends to leak out of them little by little so I had to continually wait and wipe them or I would drive around the neighborhood after the wash and I would notice water leaking out because it shows on the lip then I would just wipe it. I hardly drove my car in the rain so I don't really know how it feels to ride 80+ with 3pc wheels in the rain but now I'd rather not..

nlpamg

I do exactly that. It sucks, but I figure it's better than having dirty water marks go all over the wheels and car while driving.

midget fidger

This thread has been dead for a while, but my wheels seem to be having a similar issue and I'm considering installing http://www.iforged.com/store/product...?products_id=5

They're supposed to push the water out during the rain. I don't have iForged wheels, but they should fit onto my valve stem just fine. What do you guys think?

Here are the installation instructions - http://www.tpmssolution.com/tpmswaterinstall.pdf

MeliDwhiteAMG

Yep, I've got the reverse lip! I dont have this problem on my other car with 2pc work gnosis wheels.

I did a 130mph on the HRE's (in mexico) with zero issues smooth as glass, so stable.

First experienced it sunday coming back from vegas 65+mph we hit a really bad storm in the mountains. 60mph no problem. So much rain you can only see 10ft in front of you, people pulling over, extreme rain storm.
We never pulled over just kept going. Water was stuck in there for a while even after the rain stopped, I thought I lost a balancing weight or something.

It eventually corrected itself. Then hit a normal rain storm again in arizona with no problems.

In AZ it hardly ever rains, and when it does rain extreme amounts at one time I am not driving this car by choice.

vantage78

I believe HRE has a fix for this. Give 'em a call and let them know your serial numbers.