Not a good day, but it could have been much worse….
My relatively new Centerline wheels cracked and had a catastrophic failure.
As I was driving into work I heard a loud bang and the right rear end suddenly dropped. Oh great, blew a tire, or at least that’s what I thought. Luckily I was only traveling about 25 MPH about to turn. I get the wheel off and this is what I see:
There are no punctures to the tire, only a cut along where the rim split. The truck didn’t hit a curb, it was on flat asphalt. Never been off-roaded except for down gravel and dirt roads.
Now for a little back story. For the past month or so I’ve had a strange sound and minor vibration from the front end. I swore it had to be the wheel bearings going bad. Just to try and trouble shoot it myself, I checked all the air pressures. When that didn’t solve it, I rotated the front tires off and put the OE Goodyears and OE LE wheels on. That got rid of the sound and vibrations.
So it wasn’t the bearings, it had to be the wheels or tires. So I carefully inspected each wheel and tire. Nothing amiss there, so I put the front Centerlines on the rear and moved the rear up to the front. No vibrations or noise. So I had narrowed the problem down to two of my four Centerlines/Nittos. But nothing looked wrong with them, no cut lugs, pressure was good, and no vibrations like when a wheel is unbalanced (all stick-on weights were still in place.)
So now I’m stuck with a set of wheels I’m afraid to drive on. The OE wheels and tires are going back on. I called Centerline, and they tell me I’ll have to pay to get the wheel to them. I asked about replacing the tire, and they tell me “well it’s 2 years old.” :ugh: Yes it is, and without a wheel falling apart it may have made it 3. Hopefully they’ll see things my way and fix this situation.
Any other advice is welcome.
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