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After a clean run of the tail of the dragon Thursday I emerged on the Tennessee side and while admiring the lake from the nice straight road I put two wheels off the shoulder, hit something hard, and immediately felt a vibration.
The wheels looked fine. The tires showed no obvious damage. I didn’t see or feel bends in the lips of the front rim. But I knew it wasn’t right.
The wheels are 718 Sport in Satin Aurum.
I limped the car to the dealer in Knoxville. The front is out of round by well over an inch and the rear is also out of round but less so. Price for the replacements are $1,850 and $2,450, respectively.
Does anyone have a suggestion for OEM size replacement wheels that would be less than $4,500 for a set of 4? I don’t want a lower quality wheel but the ones I have aren’t forged and I know a big portion of the price is the Porsche tax.
The dealer recommended four new tires. They assume the two on the right are damaged and Pirelli has moved to the next gen PZero, so matching replacements aren’t available. That means I would get four new Michelins PS4s. Would anyone elect to forego replacing the tires? I’m inclined to do the replacement but it pains me.
Dealer also recommends replacing the front wheel bearing as a precautionary measure under the assumption it may fail. That’s another $1,200. Any thoughts on that?
Shelling out $4,500 for new wheels is painful. Paying another $3,000 for things that are suspected, but not known, to be broken seems a bit much.
I suspect I’ll get the whole package but wanted to hear other thoughts.
A wheel repair shop might be able to help you out rather than buying new wheels, but if you want to preserve any kind of resale value you are going to want OEM wheels to go with it.
Personally I have found Oz Racing wheels to be the best option. I have a set of Leggera HLT's on order that are due to arrive in a couple of weeks, that entire set only cost $4000 Australian.
Beautiful pics! Sorry to hear about your misfortune.
Your car is going to be up on jackstands for a couple of weeks (at least on the side that was damaged), so plan for that and if you don't have the ability to do this yourself, then find an independent who can either leave it on stands, or has wheels which you can use temporarily while it waits in their parking lot.
First thing, ship your bent wheels to Wheel Collision Center in Bath PA. They'll be straight with you as to whether they can be fixed. If they are able to fix them, let them do it - when you get them back they'll probably look brand new minus some possible marring on the wheel barrels from the repair process. If the wheels are bent enough that it'll show up in pics, then give them a ring first and let them look at the pics before you ship anything. If you can't see the bends with the naked eye, then just send them off to WCS.
As for the tires, I would NOT replace those unless there was obvious damage like a bubble or a tear in the tread. If you try to re-mount them and they won't balance on a Hunter machine, then start shopping for replacements.
I would also NOT replace the wheel bearing unless it started making noises. The wheel is the weak link in the chain, and it sacrificed itself so that hopefully nothing else suffered catastrophic damage. I'm surprised the dealer didn't advise you to replace all the suspension bushings just out of an abundance of caution. Hey, it's not their money, so the dealer can suggest anything they want!
Good luck, and please let us know how it turns out!
Wheel bearings fail for side hits not vertical hits. they're made to take vertical hits. unlikely you need a bearing. The other thing is bearings aren't on/off switches for failure, so there will be tons of warning this thing is on the way out before there is any issue. I wouldn't change it prematruely myself unless insurance was paying.
hard enough to bend 2 OE wheels = possible strut damage that isn't obvious also. I have seen that before from a car that was jumped in a construction site (lip of road cut with no ramp for repaving, so hit it at 90kph and jumped it a bit). Car drives like crap, alignment is in spec but alignment range has been altered, change the struts, problem solved. I've also seen strut tower damage from hits like that where it bent the shock point. our cars are cast aluminum so it's likely either a-ok, or there is a big problem. alignment specs before and after will tell the story and it doesn't hurt to look.
If you posted the before and after alignment specs from the dealer it would help. I assume they did an alignment and if not one should be done.
When I took the car to the dealer they put it on the lift, saw the wheels were out of round and then stopped working and started theorizing about what could be wrong.
it occurs to me that the shop really doesn’t know what’s wrong with the car and they won’t know until we mount new wheels, do an alignment, and see how it drives. It could be tires, bearings, bushings, struts, strut towers, etc. I may need a whole new car.
Seems foolish though to authorize $3,000+ of repairs for bearings and tires that might be bad when I don’t know what else might be bad. I could replace a wheel bearing that’s perfectly fine only to discover I must replace a strut that is actually damaged.
If the car was home, I’d remove the wheels, put it on jack stands and take the wheels to the local wheel shop to see if they can be repaired. But the car is four hours away. So that’s a but difficult.
I’m going to see what the insurance company says and then proceed with replacing only the wheels. After the wheels are replaced I’ll decide what else needs to be done.
I have a set of HRE Flowforms that I use for my "winter (all season)" tires and they look great and were pretty affordable (on sale now for $585 a rim no tires obviously)
I'd reach out and see if there was a local member who could lend a hand with a tow rig + trailer, or otherwise figure out how to get it towed home. Then deal with it. First I'd address the wheels, then I'd get it thrown on an alignment rack and see if everything's straight. Effectively mirroring what Zhao said. Also, you may be able to get the OEMs repaired.
For aftermarket wheels, I've had good experience with Apex; they might offer forged offerings for the GTS, but I haven't checked; they do offer forged offerings for GT4 (VS5-RS and EC7-RS), and at a decent pricepoint for what you get. Their flow formed wheels (SM10) are also very decent and look nice. I have one set of forged and one set of flow formed. Certain OZ wheels also look good on Caymans.
Just keep in mind if you do make an insurance claim Porsche procedures are likely no wheel repairs allowed. Bent rims are often not repairable too. So if you're paying out of pocket repair them if you want, but if you go through insurance go to a shop that is certified.
If you do make an insurance claim or even talk to insurance without making a claim you'll likely be saddled with an at fault claim for going off the road or hitting something even if it's a pot hole.
No reason the shop wouldn't know whats wrong now if they wanted to know with the suspension stuff, but a mechanical shop doesn't really understand what they're looking at with body repairs. I know Acura couldn't figure out a inverse strut tower from hitting a chunk of cement on the highway. I figured out the problem in under 5 minutes in the parking lot.
Your problem should be all localized in the suspension. From your description you'd have to be really downplaying the bumps you hit for it to be any worse than that so a bent struts or bent knuckles at worst. Bearings are almost guaranteed to be fine. Suspension/wheels are designed with increasing strength, so the outermost stuff compromises first. you generally wont' have a bent subframe without a bent control arm. you wont have a bent knuckle without a bad bearing on a side hit. etc. They could do an alignment check right now with the bent rims to see where things sit. It won't be 100% accurate, but it'll give a really good idea what happened, especially as you can rotate the bent rims 180 degrees and split the difference to see what the alignment is likely like without bent rims.
Not to derail this thread but hoping helpful to OP. Are there any GT style wheels for the GTS with a little better offset for the GTS (no rubbing)? I am pretty sure I’m going to put the larger GT4 tires on my OEM wheels once the time comes but would love the GT style wheels too.
Beautiful GTS and sorry to hear about the damage. As others have mentioned, we offer forged and flow formed wheels specifically engineered for the 718 chassis and the GTS model can run 18", 19" or 20" wheels depending on driver preference, desired tire model/availability, etc. Our preferred fitments for the GTS are listed below, which feature wider 9" front wheels to improve handling and mitigate understeer, while also being considerably lighter on all four corners as well. Aside from a meaningful improvement in performance and handling, our wheels are also backed by an unmatched replacement program should you have have an unfortunate event in the future.
I have a set of HRE Flowforms that I use for my "winter (all season)" tires and they look great and were pretty affordable (on sale now for $585 a rim no tires obviously)
What are the sizes, offsets, etc on these? Which model?
08-20-2022, 09:42 PM
Replacement wheel options/opinions
