I'm a UK crossfire owner and have been a very happy one for nearly two years :-)

recently my rear nearside tyre is loosing about 1-2 psi per day. After checking the obvious things i took to a garage to check it out and it turns out that their is a small hairline crack in the alloy.

I spoke to my nearest Chryser main dealer who quoted £650 for a replacement 19" alloy.

after doing some of my own research on repair vs. new i just wanted to see what the opinion here was, as i had read a number of articles on reduced strength of the alloy after repair/welding etc.

I would really appreciate any input. on suggested courses of action, preferably ones that cost less than £650!

Many thanks,

Rob

 

Could you please translate L650 into US dollars? My suggestion. Go to Ebay.com I have ordered two replacements for my car and they were about $200 US. I had the old ones with curb rash fixed for about $120 US.

Sorry I have no information on crack repair.

 

Holy Moly. That's 1000 US bucks. I paid that for a set of 4 new Mandrus Milleniums.

Don't think I'd repair it. Might be able to pick up a salvage wheel somewhere.

 

We are getting an srt rim repaired today. It has a 1/2 inch long crack on the inside rim lip. $100 with tire mounted and balanced. I would have preferred a replacement, but a repair is at least worth a try. I will post again if it ever gives trouble.

 

thanks for the posts.

yeah at the current exchange rate £650 is $1,064.94 for one 19" alloy.

do you have any of you have recommended sellers for the 19" rear alloy in the states that would ship worldwide?

couple that i found on ebay, presumably choosing the right one is pretty straight forward. its a 2004 crossfire, these things seems pretty standard:
FACTORY OEM 19" CHRYSLER CROSSFIRE WHEEL RIM:eBay Motors (item 200394072691 end time Nov-12-09 06:53:33 PST)

OEM ORIGINAL 19" CHRYSLER CROSSFIRE WHEEL RIM 2230:eBay Motors (item 250507233229 end time Oct-31-09 09:42:39 PDT)

thanks

Rob

 

Here is a set of 4 wheels for $250 https://www.crossfireforum.org/forum...-tx-250-a.html

 

Sorry for the bad luck. It's possible to repair these, but I'd always be nervous at high speeds. Agree with advice above -- search ebay and for sale listings on this site. Even if you have to pay trans-Atlantic shipping it's got to be cheaper than your dealer. Invest in a phone call to talk to the seller and get pictures of the rim. You might have to accept some curb (kerb?) rash. But there is a thread on this forum for repairing rash.

Hey -- it may be cheaper to book an off-season round trip to NYC or Chicago and then bring the rim back in a box in lieu of luggage!!

 

hey Sensless. where in UK are you?? try to see if those ebay sellers will ship it to UK. If not, if you can wait till mid Novemeber, I might be able to help you. You just need one, right?? My sister live 35min away from London(forgot exactly where she live) and I am actually going there in mid November. So I can just buy one on ebay and bring it with me. lol.... let me know man.

 

dcspride - Dude thats genius!! I might take you up on that offer - i'm only an hour from London. I see if i can get anything sorted before then though.

What makes it worse though is that my wife is on a weeks visit to the States! I can't believe i didn't think to get her to pick one up for me while she's out there *hangs head in shame*. Having said that not sure she' d bring one back anyway!!

Goldwing - yep my sentiments exactly, my concern with going the repair route would be that i'd always be thinking about it when accelerating hard etc.. And if i ever sold it i think i might feel little guilty. So gonna go the replacement route.

 

The problem with wheels re-cracking after welding is covered in 2 areas.

1. When repairing a crack in a wheel the microstructure of the alloy needs to be stress relieved. That's just a fancy way of saying that the best way to do it is to drill a big 'ol hole in the wheel at the end of the crack. Then you can preheat the metal and proceed to weld it back together. When people just weld it up and lathe it down they have just filled the existing gap, not corrected the problem. The crack will reappear simply because it's really still there, there was no stress relief.

2. If a wheel is welded (especially alloy) it MUST be heat treated after the welding process. The chances of using the EXACT same chemistry filler rod as the alloy's base material is somewhere between zero and nil. Most times, a welder will use a filler rod that has a higher strength than the base metal, thus they think they are covering their a$$. What they are really doing is filling a crack with some very hard material and causing small cracks on either side of the weld in the HAZ (heat affected zone). This will just cause more problems down the road because you have pre-disposed the wheel to fail in a area very close to the original repair. To avoid this a good welder will pre-heat the wheel to a elevated temperature for welding, and then perform a post-weld heat treat. This helps to equalize the material's base strenght to a "normalized" point, and the repair should be as good as the rest of the wheel.

 

Thanks. Great info.