one of my s lites has a classic fatigue crack right in the round where the outer rim turns up to form the bead wall. it's in a radial direction. (i've looked at it under 20x)

the wheel has only 7000 miles on it and has NO dents or curb rash. it's been only street driven.

has anyone else seen this on an s lite WITHOUT any damage? my car is still under warranty, so i'm going to try for a replacement.

 

Yes. Mine had a crack that I noticed just after we took delivery. The massive amounts of brake dust the OEM pads give off gave it away. I did not notice it when looking over the car at the dealership. My crack was at the base of a spoke headed towards the knut/bolt hole. I was very concerned about safety. Had a devil of a time getting MoTW to replace it. Finally did though. And then, I took them off for aftermarket wheels. Go figure!

 

--Man, that sucks, sorry to hear you're having problems with your rims. I hope my car doesn't develop that. It'll be more pronounced with my white rims, but I still hope I don't see that. While those alloy wheels are heavy at 25lbs. I still like their design the best.

Yeah you should make the dealer replace your rims. Or atleast the broken one. Hope Mini looks into this and checks out why they're cracking and not just flexing like it should.

--pyratio

 

Looked like a casting/forging problem to me. It was in a bad area though for stress. We could not have driven it hard enough to induce such a crack from stress, I feel. I had the car less than a week at that point.

 

with a drawn in arrow showing where to look at the rims if the crack is not easily visible.

Thanks and good luck

 

could it be just the paint cracking? not sure how you can tell...but just
wondering. it can't be a stress fracture if it's brand new.

 

No, it was a deep crack. You can't miss it if you look for it. This leads me to believe it was a manufacturing/QA/materials problem.

 

Mine was an X-lite not the S-lite. The crack was under the clear coat at the base of the spoke where it met the rim. Defiantly a manufacturing defect.

The replacement was gouged badly by the installer the dealer selected. Broke my heart.

 

oh i see...

 

I think I found a crack on one of my white S-lites. It's been raining for days this weekend and I hadn't had a chance to clean my wheels until today. After wiping them down I found a line on the inside of my rim that looks like a stress crack. Same deal, no rim damage. Just a nasty little black line. Don't know how deep it is. I am still at work so I don't have anything to look at it under magnification. I'll try to clean it further with some 303 and if it doesn't go away I'll take it to the dealer for documentation.

--pyratio

 

boooooo~!

hope you get a free replacement...