Saw this on another forum, and thought I'd pass it along so anyone who is running Weld Pro Star wheels would hopefully at least inspect their wheels. http://2loose.chevytalk.org/weldrims.html
I'll continue to use them. I've had them on my rides. I've sold countless sets of them. They are THE popular wheel for street cars. Light, inexpensive. This is the first failure I've EVER seen with them. I believe they are being made in the same factory, even with American buying them. But who knows. A customer of mine has a wheelstanding Chevelle with them on the front. Its a 540 BBC with nitrous. Runs 8.60s and leaves on the bumper every pass. He's bent a dozen of these wheels and never had a failure like this. I can imagine the scenario repeats itself for dozens of other racecars.
man, that guy must have a death wish, to keep putting the same failure prone wheels back on his truck after multiple failures. one wheel breaks, it may be a fluke, let it slide. second wheel breaks, somethings up. third and fourth and more. maybe you would want to stop using the defective fucking wheels?
HMMM....If you look closely at the rear view of the one rim that supposedly has cracks starting to form, look at the rest of the rim. It looks as though there is quite a bit of corrosion there. Also, if you look close at the front of the rims, it looks as though there is pitting. Salt/sea air + aluminum will most definately set up corrosion, which will in turn cause failure. Corrosion of aluminum is not like "Rusting" of steel. Alumn corrosion will become granular. Once the corrosion gets a start in the smallest of nitches, the the rest will be history as they say. Along the same lines here, a aircraft which is made of aluminum and is based near the coastal areas will suffer the same fate. This is why the Navy planes are treated to withstand the elements of the sea. This fellow who had this problem was from Maui?????
Scary! I have them on my 35. Thanks for the heads up. Gotta run out to the Garage..........................
I thought they had that fixed. I saw this before about 8 to 10 years ago. A guy I knew with a pro street 70 chevy truck had several to break on him. Weld put it off on the weight of the truck w/BBC.
My wife had those on her 57 Chevrolet truck for over 5 years, never had a problem. I wonder if he has some steering angle issues that are putting large amounts of side force on the rims while turning?
my guess it's the combination of being negative offset wheels, and being on a truck. Those old trucks are heavy! and the offset puts a pretty significant bending load on the wheel.
I don't know the real specifics (I believe he said his truck weighs 2100 on the front end) but they replaced the wheels with Torque Thrust IIs (if I remember right) and he's content now. I think the guy said he was in Hawaii, so corrosion could be an issue. I just wanted to put the word out about this - just in case anyone might accidentally suffer the same problem.
I have a friend who runs those and has bent 2 or 3 of them on his wheelstanding street car...but never broke any.
i've seen alot of the 5-5 bolt pattern wheels break just like that. that truck is to heavy for those wheels. I would have changed those after the first one broke, and not tried seven more.
HMMMM....One feller has a problem with his rims, so now everyone is going to go out to the shed and throw away their Weld rims!!!! Let me tell you about the trouble I've had with Flatheads!!!!!! Hellraiser
Never heard anything like this before about those wheels.They are not intended for trucks though...whether it has a Chevelle chassis or not....trucks have a taller center of gravity...therefore putting much more stress on the wheels.
The Jalopy Journal
