dgreen78

So I am driving along the road and I hear a very odd grinding noise. I pulled over and 2 of my spokes on my Kineses F110 wheel are cracked all the way through the spokes! I was amazed as I thought these were bullet proof strong wheels! So I have the car flat bedded away to a near by shop. The tire guy comes back to me and says that they have been welded up recently! I just bought these a month ago from a forum member online that told me they were "just re-painted because of some minor scratches." I am pretty pissed at this point for not only being f*cked over for buying welded up wheels but this could have killed myself or others on the road!!! Imagine if I was driving the car hard and it busted completely!

You can see the welds on the back side were the cracks are if you look closely. Come to find out these wheels were bought with sheared spokes from a major wheel repair company (that a lot of guys on here get their wheels from), welded up, painted over, and re-sold! Any proper wheel shop would know not to weld spokes on a forged wheel. This company attempted it not once, but twice on the same wheel!



You can see the spokes have been welded up and painted over:



What bothers me is that I was just about to blast down the Texas mile at 200+ mph!! Glad I caught it when I did! Its a shame that companies like this are still in business. Hopefully know one else on the board has bought wheels from this company and dont catch it before its too late!

chrislis

It's not all one persons fault, it's also yours for not figuring this out up front. When you buy something, next time don't impulse buy and review what you're putting money towards. Show the original FS ad, link it, whatever. But at the same time of him not disclosing it being wrong, you learned your lesson didn't you? Rewelded wheels are easy to figure out by running your finger on the front and back of each spoke, did you do that? Chances are you didn't, no one does. Needless to say, your experience does not warrant the labeling of being bad to buy used wheels. You also didn't mention if you made any contact with the seller afterwards, sounds like it's a company not a person, I'm sure they'll make things right if you actually speak with them.

WhitePano

kinesis used to be good til asanti/lexani purchased them.. this doesn't surprise me i've seen countless asantis like this

Luke@tirerack

I for one would not be running any high speed event on used wheels and tires. You have no idea what they have been through and what kind of abuse they have seen or the fatigue issues they may have

p.s. I will also not buy a used parachute

elijah

Whether he is a newbie or not he got ripped off and all he is doing is expressing himself freely. The seller is obviously a crook and the buyer neglected to assure that they were actually in a good condition for road use.
All in all I feel for you and if it were me (impossible because I never buy used products for my cars) I would go ape **** and claim my money back because by discarding the truth he not only put your life in danger but the lives of all others on the road.

Do what you gotta do and get that refund.

kingsley

I did learn something from chrislis

MBFLO

sucks to be screwed over by forum member, Their Fault !! !!
996TT and buying used , refurbed wheels, Your Fault!! .
you as the buyer should of inspected better and so should of the place that installed them for you as im sure when they were put on they did not look like that but any professional rim/tire installation shop should of been able to detect that before installing onto your 996TT.
very nice 1st post .. thank god they cracked instead of totally dissassembled or else you wouldnt be making a 1st post

Maybe you should contact the seller , inform him of your situation and see if they make it right before *****ing about some used wheels you threw on your 996TT , i guess if you purchased online and they were shipped to you , you would of been entitled to return them upon inspection of being sold some BS refurbed wheels .. If you purchased cash in person then you are probably SOL .. but look at bright side , you drive a nice Porsche , im sure a replacement set of wheels is no biggy for you in the end just a hassle . for what its worth i drive a 11 yr old AMG and am purchasing brand new set of wheels that cost 1/4 of my cars worth .. surely you cant be that big of a cheap @$$...

Goodluck to you tho !! drive safe !!

elijah

I agree and he did make a very valid point, just no need to be calling people names and members tend to do that often with newbies which i find ridiculous/pathetic.

MiamiAMG

dgreen78

Thanks guys, and just because this is my first post here doesn't mean I don't have a few thousand posts in other forums. Often people will just look at a person with one post and think "newb." I admit I do that on occasion too

The point here is not to ***** or whine but to provide information that might save someone from an accident or worse. If you notice I am not naming any names. I thought it would be good to inform guys on here as their are a lot of wheels for sale on here. I just hope everyone gets them thoroughly inspected before mounting them on your cars. These wheels were shipped directly to me from one of the biggest Benz wheel suppliers around. I admit to not being a wheel expert and put trust in these wheels since the company had a good reputation. And yes, they were put on by a major tire shop which failed to mention anything about the weld marks. The wheel shop did a good job of shaving down the welds smooth before painting over the spokes.

And I did try to settle with the wheel dealer BEFORE I made any posts about wheel safety on any forums. They simply offered me a 2/3 credit towards some other wheels from their outfit. I asked for a full refund and was denied. So this is what happens....

vtsnake

It sounds like you don't want to throw anyone under a bus but it would be helpful to us forum members to know who sold you these so we can be a little more cautious with OUR future purchases? Care to tell us?

mikekuriger

I'd be looking to hurt someone

amdeutsch

Interestingly I saw a similar post, same screen name, on another car forum, non MB, where a very similar post stated that they were bought of that forum for that particular car brand. And there a vendor chimed in identifying those as replica wheels. Within that thread someone else posted that in yet another car forum a once again similar thread was posted.

So, since it appears that not all is as it seems this thread will be monitored and action taken when and if warranted.

Ctrl+alt+Elite

I'm going to have to go ahead and agree with you...