Check your wheels

[BSharp]

Some of you know David Schwarze. yesterday at TWS he happened to look at his left rear wheel (Konig Villians) and noticed a crack. These were bought used and were used for two events.

[mitchntx]

http://www.aicmctexas.com/forums/vie...?p=22314#22314

See the last couple posts ..

[BSharp]

He had mounted the tires a couple of days before, no cracks.

[donovan]

Wow, that is scary looking!

DD

[gt40]

Yikes! :shock:

Was this caught in the pits, or did he feel something on the track?

[AI#97]

How appropriate that is cracked on the "made in Taiwan" stamp!!! LOL!!!

Wheels can crack no matter what brand they are. Those that are running the lightweights out there need to be more aware of it than normal. Glad he caught this as it could have been bad at TWS.

I will be keeping an eye on my konigs a little more than usual.


did Dave ever attribute this to an off or a curb hit during the event? Possibly a heat issue with his side exit exhaust right in front of the wheels?

[AI#97]

See if Dave can/will cut the spoke on both sides of the crack so we can see the inside of the cracked area. A guy here in the office looked at the picture and has done a lot of fatigue failure analysis. He said it looks like the little "punched" spot at the bottom of the crack on the back side looks like it was a flaw during casting with a lot of porosity in the spoke... he said send over this way and he would give you a quick opinion on it!

[oz98cobra]

...
Wheels can crack no matter what brand they are. Those that are running the lightweights out there need to be more aware of it than normal...

Actually Matt, most of the cast lightweights are made using a different casting process to regular heavy alloy wheels (centrifugal - the mold is spinning when the metal is cast) which supposedly reduces porosity and casting flaws, and makes them more like forged wheels - our Kosei and the Enkei are both made this way. Ironically, Enkei calls their technology the "MAT" process (which apparently means "most advanced tecnhology" :lol: )

But light weight means they are easily beat up, and the way we have been bending these things out of shape so far this year, they will all be toast long before they have had time to develop fatigue cracks :roll:

[AI#97]

But light weight means they are easily beat up, and the way we have been bending these things out of shape so far this year, they will all be toast long before they have had time to develop fatigue cracks :roll:

Have you guys had more problems than just the incident in houston? That sucks.

I like my battleships for now. I got 8 konigs and 14 cobra R's right now and I am about to start selling off a few of the Fox R's and some used tires to make some room in the garage. Goal is to get down to one set of R58's and the two sets of konigs.

I did read some where that the R888's are about 12mm wider than our current RA1's so it looks like I may be shopping for 9.5" wheels to account for that next season? :cry:

[dirwin]

Clamp a piece of brazing rod to your axle tube making sure that it is 90 degrees off the axle and 1/16" from the inside of the wheel. Take the car out and run it hard. With most wheels you will find that the flex is so great that you will find the rod will be about 1/4 in shorter, or mangled at the end of the run. Current off the shelf street wheels are not designed for, and can not handle a racing application of any type. Enkei is probably the best I have seen, as long as you are using their race cast wheels and not the street version of the same. We have fought some enormous wheel flex issues with the 5zigen FN01R-C and they are considered to be one of the best "race" wheels on the market. Some of the problem is the heavy cars, but they even flex on the Fox body. The bottom line is if you bend and flex any cast wheel over an over it will crack, and a racing application is extreme. One of the reasons we choose to inspect our wheels as often as we do is we decided to run cast wheels instead of forged (3-4 time the cost). Inspect cast wheels all the time and bend a few or run the risk of breaking $1000 Fiske or BBS forged 3 piece wheel? Our choice was cast wheels at $200 each. Why not Enkei? Little secret info coming here, the FN01R-C is the only sub 17 pound 17" production race wheel on the market that will clear 14" floating rotor, big caliper Brembo brakes with no modifications required to the caliper.