Klassens FAIL on Murci Fri night

Glad you're OK.

 

Can someone tell me why HREs are an exception to other aftermarket rims?

 

I'd also like to know why HRE's are held to such esteem. Does HRE produce wheels for motorsport or supply them to manufacturers? Do people just think they look good?

I'd also like to know why HRE's are held to such esteem. Does HRE produce wheels for motorsport or supply them to manufacturers? Do people just think they look good?

 

I have no idea either...I had a set on my old NSX and I had 2 stress fractures in the lips of the rear wheels, both causing tire deflation. They came with the car, I wouldn't have put them on personally.

Sean, glad to hear that you're okay. I have contacted a Klassen representative to contact you for more information and assistance. You my friend are a very lucky man.

The fact is that Hre, Klassen and most multipiece wheel centers are forged from billet aluminum. If there is a defect with the billet itself, it will manifest onto the finished product regardless of it being forged or not, so cracking can occur on any wheel. In addition, if the tire pressure is not maintained, additional stress on the wheel can cause for wheel failure as well.. What happens is that the load bearing capacity of the tire is compromised and this load has shifted to the wheels. The wheels are then just additionally ladened with weight that originally should be supported by the tire... Being that the wheel potentially has been worked on by a 3rd party, it could be that the low tire pressure might have been ridden on for an extended period of time, causing fatigue of the wheel itself. Those are the possible scenarios I can think of in this case...

The question you have to ask yourself when putting on aftermarket wheels is what testing did they do no the design. Large OEMs do a lot of wheel destruction tests, to make sure the wheel is safe, since this is a HUGE liability issue.

 

Aftermarket guys usually don't. They can't afford to for the small volume and cost.

 

Since your life is riding on wheels, do you really want to go with an unproven set of aftermarket wheels? Can you imagine what would have happened to the OP if he was doing 180mph? It would have been another funeral thread....

 

I stick to OEM wheels on all our cars.

ouch, glad you're safe....I've seen any wheel snap like that

Kudos to Klassen... Frank from Klassen tracked down my cell phone number and contacted me - totally unsolicited. I hadn't reached out to them yet. Frank has arranged to have all the wheels sent to them for inspection as well as repair invoices from Lambo. He expressed his concern about my safety and that of his customers and wants to ensure such a failure never occurs again (hence, he wants the wheels for inspection). I will keep you all posted on progress, but this seems to be a great gesture of good faith.

Wow..very nice of him..hope it works out well for you.

that really says alot about the company

Wow, that is awesome! Great customer service!!!! RIGHT ON KLASSEN!!! I am impressed!

I'd also like to know why HRE's are held to such esteem. Does HRE produce wheels for motorsport or supply them to manufacturers? Do people just think they look good?

 

I know HREs are TUV (German) approved which I believe is a pretty high standard. I think few aftermarket wheels get that certification.

Ouch! That's fcuking crazy! At least your safe though.

Here is my take from what I can see in the pictures:

 

No amount of bolting the hoop to the center, or over-torquing of any bolts/lug nuts could ever cause the failure you suffered.

 

This is entirely either a design or material flaw, and possibly a mixture of the two. It very well could have been a bad forging from the start that wasn't discovered. And seeing as almost all forging blanks come from the same place, this is a bit unlikely, but up to the engineers doing the forensics to sort out.

 

The very first thing I would do is have the other 3 wheel centers stripped and magna-fluxed. This will show any cracks immediately, even if they are very minor and all but hidden to the naked eye. This is how we check blocks for cracks prior to machining etc. The results here will start the road map of what exactly went wrong.

 

I'm not even going to speculate, but just looking at the curve of those spokes and the way the mounting section is laterally suspended vs vertically aligned spokes, it's a hell of a fatigue point/stress riser down there.

 

Best of luck with everything, hope you get it sorted out relatively unscathed.

If i were in your shoes, i would have lambo see how much all the rivits and the wheels themselves were torqued to before sending them out to KLASSEN. Not because I think KLassen wouls cheat me, but because im just soo curious only from reading this thread......

 

 

anyway best of luck

If i were in your shoes, i would have lambo see how much all the rivits and the wheels themselves were torqued to before sending them out to KLASSEN. Not because I think KLassen wouls cheat me, but because im just soo curious only from reading this thread......

 

 

anyway best of luck

Not a bad idea... Thx

Glad you are ok and klassen is taking care of it! If I can be of any help let me know.

Glad Klassen is trying to make good on the incident.

It'll be interesting to see what they say the cause of the rim breaking apart was...

Glad to hear they are making it right.

There doesnt seem to be any redundency (sic) built into a lot of these wheels. I feel you should be able to smoke a wheel into a curb, have it bend but not shatter. I dont get it.

There doesnt seem to be any redundency (sic) built into a lot of these wheels. I feel you should be able to smoke a wheel into a curb, have it bend but not shatter. I dont get it.

 

 

That has to do with a few things, but this was an entirely different type of failure. A lot of that depends on the type of metal used, grade of billet AL they start with, etc.

 

A fatigue failure like this is more of a design problem IMO, just like bending a paperclip back and forth enough times, eventually it just snaps. AL is just horrible in that type of stress and you see the end result.

Mistakes happen ,parts fail, and no one is perfect. Its how a company handles an issue when something goes wrong that seperates the good from the bad and it sounds like they have even exceeded your expectations to get the problem resolved, thats always good to hear!

I agree with "emanon" thats a good looking wheel but a fragile design with alot of weight riding on it, I'm curious how many other wheels of that design are out there and for how long?

You guys must realize this is not a new wheel....this wheel probably has 2k miles on them before the new owner purchased them. This is the only thing that is making this interesting. New owner purchased these used, took them apart, painted, put back together the wheels then this happens? don't you find this interesting?

 

I had GFG's wheels that smacked a curb and bent the barrel and did not break the centers...something is not right here for the wheel to be just driving down the road and this happening as a result.

 

MY RECOMMENDATION - Go buy a torque wrench and see what the other lug nuts were torqured to and also the three pc bolts. Just curious to see what you find for all four wheels and if all four wheels are all torqued the same.

.

 

 

wow.. glad you are ok.. could have been very bad..

 

 

assuming proper fitment on your car, my thoughts:

 

 

1. i would have the lambo dealer measure torque specs on lugs just so someone doesn't say wheel was falling off. i would also have lambo make a written inspection of the wheel bolts including torque specs etc. (the bolts that hold the rim pieces together)

 

 

2. assuming that you didn't hit anything (pothole for example) as the wheel doesn't look to be bent, it looks like a design/material flaw, meaning the other 3 wheels are garbage. (even if you magna flux them and they are found to be ok).

 

3. i would be surprised if the disassembly for painting had anything to do with the failure unless the wheel bolts weren't torqued properly and the rim started to loosen and come apart. ( which doesn't look like happened)

 

4. i would post this on every major car website to see if anyone else has had this problem.

 

5. i am surprised that the wheel stayed within the wheel well.

 

 

note to everyone: better be careful whose wheels you install on your car..

 

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nice to see klassen is trying to help.

keep us posted on the situation.

glad you're safe.......

I do not get it. Just what exactly do we expect Klassen to say or do, to make the OP feel better?

 

Great that they will pay for ALL the damage, as they rightly should, IF the wheel was indeed defective, and not run into a kurb sideways, or otherwise damaged by the driver, which OP say they were not. Or not heat stressed via powdercoating, or some other trauma during disassembly by previous owner. ie. dropping, reassembly hammering to fit, etc. Nobody will ever know....

 

But no matter the lip service form the manufacturer, I would not trust this model of Klassen wheel again after seeing this. Their fault or not. Too big a risk on this wheel design. Very unfortunate for the manufacturer that this happened to them. I sympathize. With safety items like this, you only need to make one mistake to make a bad impression. And I agree with JR, all the wheels are now suspect, Magnaflux or not, so they are all garbage.

 

Is the OP really going to trust another set of these model of wheels on their Lambo? Will be very interesting to find out. Keep us posted.....

 

And one other thing. Wrong torqueing or loose wheel nuts could cause this failure, but only if the wheel was very loose on the axle and wobbling around. That can crack a wheel.

 

Was it assumed above correctly that the OP stopped the car with the wheel in the wheel well? They never said whether they did or not. Due to the damage, I am guessing the wheel parted company with the car, but was only put back for the photo.