Aluminum wheels

[Chotch]

🤔Aluminum does not rust. Not sure where the repair guys come up with that. Where it a wheel failure problem I can’t imagine either the manufacturer or ETI backing away from it . I would bet it is a coating failure which cosmetically is a problem but not a safety issue. Of course the main reason one puts alloy wheels on a vehicle is for the cosmetics.

[AnnHay]

Originally Posted by Chotch

🤔Aluminum does not rust. Not sure where the repair guys come up with that.

No one said the aluminum is rusting ... they said the red streaks are rust. Here is more information, in my words, from the RV repair shop ... the protective covering is coming off the wheels prematurely and allowing rust/iron/dirt/etc, road debris in other words, to settle into cracks that shouldn't but do already exist in the wheels. The cracks in the wheels now show up because that road dust has iron in it ... it's that iron that is rusting. It's the cracks that are the failure of the wheels, which might not have shown up if the protective covering had not come off prematurely. As well, I'm told the road dust and iron and rust will exacerbate the cracking of the aluminum alloy and speed up the failure of the aluminum alloy. The iron rust did not cause the cracking ... the iron rust is simply making the cracks obvious to us. One might wonder whether these cracks exist on all of these HiSpec wheels, but they just don't show up on some wheels where the protective covering hasn't come off yet. The guys at the local RV shop are not impressed with HiSpec wheels.

[Gori]

Originally Posted by TacomaAnn

No one said the aluminum is rusting ... they said the red streaks are rust. Here is more information, in my words, from the RV repair shop ... the protective covering is coming off the wheels prematurely and allowing rust/iron/dirt/etc, road debris in other words, to settle into cracks that shouldn't but do already exist in the wheels. The cracks in the wheels now show up because that road dust has iron in it ... it's that iron that is rusting. It's the cracks that are the failure of the wheels, which might not have shown up if the protective covering had not come off prematurely. As well, I'm told the road dust and iron and rust will exacerbate the cracking of the aluminum alloy and speed up the failure of the aluminum alloy. The iron rust did not cause the cracking ... the iron rust is simply making the cracks obvious to us. One might wonder whether these cracks exist on all of these HiSpec wheels, but they just don't show up on some wheels where the protective covering hasn't come off yet. The guys at the local RV shop are not impressed with HiSpec wheels.

Thank you so much for this info, and clarification. Maybe I'll pass on the pretty/fancy wheels and upgrade at a later date?

Gori