Dang! Broken Wheel

[Paul & Deb]

Man, I am so glad for routines but I wish I had found it sooner.

We are headed out in an hour to take our kids and grandkids camping at the beach and I was checking tire pressures and found a broken wheel! Crap!!

I put the spare on and contacted Lionshead. They immediately sent me a claim form and I have sent it back with the required photos. I don't remember the warranty period on these but my trailer is 1 1/2 years old so I hope it's not an issue and they can get me a wheel quickly.

We take off on August 5th for 2 months including the Rally so if they won't replace under warranty, I need to find a vendor for a new set of wheels very, very quickly.

[campinfool]

What do think may have caused that? Do you remember hitting a curb or something in the road?

Bummer, hope all works out in your favor.

Jim

[LCBoyer]

Hey Paul! Glad you caught it before you were on the highway

[J&G garage]

That must have been some curb!

[TucsonJim]

Paul - Rob (Cate & Rob) is the mechanical engineer and can probably provide information on possible causes. But my understanding is that these are cast wheels which can have manufacturing defects that can show many miles and years down the road. Items like foreign inclusions, porosity and other defects can happen to a casting. So you may or may not have had an impact that caused this.

Jim

[arhayes]

We thought we had a flat tire a while back and it turned out to be a 2 1/2" long hairline crack in our rim. It had to be immersed in a water tank to finally find it as it was so slow it'd take a day and a half to deflate the tire. Doubt it was from a strike of some type as it on the inside of the rim in the direction of rotation. I guess defects happen and it took 3 years and 25,000 miles at 125psi to show itself.

[Cate&Rob]

Hi Paul,

Glad you saw that before it turned into an on-the-road wheel failure ! I agree with Jim that this looks like a casting stress relief fracture rather than something you could do with a driving impact. I have seen pictures of this type of failure on Lionshead wheels before. We should certainly plan to discuss this at the Rally Lionshead Tech Session.

Rob

[bertschb]

Holy cow!!! Guess I need to start closing looking at my wheels now when I check my tires. Sheesh!

[Greene728]

Wow! So glad you caught it in time. I too will certainly be watching mine even closer than I already do.

[GENESIS]

Hi Paul,

Glad you saw that before it turned into an on-the-road wheel failure ! I agree with Jim that this looks like a casting stress relief fracture rather than something you could do with a driving impact. I have seen pictures of this type of failure on Lionshead wheels before. We should certainly plan to discuss this at the Rally Lionshead Tech Session.

Rob

Jeepers creepers - that is one ugly fracture!!

+1 The uniformity of the crack suggests it was caused during the casting process. Normal car rims don't see anywhere NEAR the torque loads an RV wheel sees and therefore a "cast" wheel is more than adequate. But when an RV rim/tire is being "scrubbed" and/or "dragged" in a turning maneuver, there's torque or twisting loads that the tires/rims see that car rims don't see. It's more costly, but a forged aluminum wheel would be an excellent solution since the forging process almost eliminates the possibility of these types of grain structure cracks. Honestly......with today's high-speed machining technology, manufacturers can hog out rims from forged aluminum billets like crazy. Additionally.....when stress engineers need certain grain directions, there a process called net forging where the part is forged almost complete and then it's "cleaned-up" on a CNC to yield the final product as designed.

And next week boys and girls, Uncle Tom will dispel the myth of "aircraft grade aluminum".

Tom