Quote:
Originally Posted by GO FURTHER
I have often wondered if wheels with a greater number of "spokes" than a wheel designed with less spokes (such as the stock Mustang GT "20 spoke", versus say a 5 spoke wheel), helps lessen the chance of buckling the rim at the same impact speed?
|
My experience with buckled rims has been that the buckles only occur on the inside of the rim, never had an issue on the outside. Not unless you run the thing over a gutter of course.
And from there I think it comes down to offset and the strength of the rim.
I ran genuine EL GT rims on my EL. They were a bloody heavy 17 x 8.5" rim. Rim and tyre they weighed neatly 1/3 more than the 19 x 8.5" on my FPV.
The offset on the EL rims are +6, so you can say the hub face is near on the centreline and the spokes attach to the inside of the rim directly below and radiate to the outside, so much of the rim was supported. A/B/F series is +36 so the face is further outside and the spokes don't support as much of the centre.
In regards to factory B-series stuff, I think it was just cheap crap Ford was installing. The AU rims have the same offset but I don't remember any complaints about buckling like the B-series, so its possible to offer a decent rim if they wanted. And dont forget the B-series coincided with Ford taking away wheel production from ROH and sending it overseas. Wheels were no longer being made at an Aussie company by Aussie designers for Aussie conditions. They were just as cheap as possible to conform.
POS Ghia has very thick and chunky 9 spoke alloys, but the rim still has buckles on the inside.
I remember back in the day the GM of the company I worked for bought a new 5 series. One of the original weird looking ones with run flat tires. He lived past Geelong, so drove Geelong to Laverton every day down at that stage a newly finished freeway.
A few months in he had a buckled rim, they replaced it under warranty. Few months later another rim was buckled. They said "it has to be you, you've already done one. You have to pay for a new one". He argued freeway driving doesn't do that, but gave in anyways.
Few months later another buckle. When he looked under the car he noticed the inner edge and bead area of the new rim was redesigned. Far thicker and stronger. He went to a BMW dealership and looked under the new cars there and sure enough, they all had redesigned rims.
Turns out BMW was getting stung with warranty claims on rims. The super hard sidewalls on the run flats were transferring road irregularities straight to the bead of the rim and it wasn't strong enough to resist so it buckled. Just on normal Aussie roads. BMW responded by creating this revised Australian spec wheel that solved the problem and quietly fitted them to all new vehicles, but were screwing over existing owners.
The GM threatened them with a fit for purpose suit at small claims and BMW caved and replaced the remaining 3 wheels with revised versions and refunded the purchase of the second buckle. He never complained about wheel problems again after that.