leaking and vibrating aluminum wheels

[blye]

I have a 1999 SSEi with the 5-star polished chrome aluminum wheels. 3 out of 4 of the wheels are leaking air at the bead and around the valve. There is significant corrosion around the valve stem (bits of metal have chipped away) and major flaking chrome inside the wheel. One tire deflates in only a week.

Worse, the car vibrates at 60 mph... I swapped the front wheels with someone else's (from a chrysler minivan!) and the ride was nice and smooth.
So either the tires are bad or wheels are slightly bent.

The tires are 7 year old Goodyear triple treds.

So, what should I do, considering this is a 13 year old car I dont want to spend a fortune.

1. buy steel wheels and hubcaps (cheap but nasty looking)
2. buy aluminum wheels (max $150/wheel)
3. buy used wheels (from a grand prix or similar) Is it worth the risk?
4. Repair the wheels
5. ???

I kinda like the old-school black lattice with chrome ring wheels. Like Ben's car: http://i1169.photobucket.com/albums/r50 ... nature.jpg
My car is the Bronzemist Metalic colour.

thanks

[LakevilleSSEi]

I would before anything take the tire(s) in question into a tire shop and have them thrown on a balancer, preferably a place that has a road force testing balancer. See if they're out of balance, out of round, etc.

Could take and break the wheel and tire apart, get a scotch brite pad (or if you have a die grinder or dremel, use that with a rather abrasive buffing wheel) and go around the beads of the rim, and pull the valve stem out and do the best you can to get in and around that area, get everything nice and clean, and put the tire back on using some bead sealer. Also replace your valve stem with a NEW one. Do not reuse the old one.

Otherwise, have you tried putting the fronts on the rear, and rears up front to see if the symptoms are still there? Acutally, do that first, THEN the tire shop for balancing and buffing of the tire mating surface.

[01bonneSC]

You can take a drill with a wire cup(or wheel) and take all that corrosion off. Ive done it a million times.

[blye]

Thanks for the replies.

There are actually two problems with the wheels, and thats why I am contemplating whether to spend the money to fix them or buy new ones.

The car has had vibration problems for a long time, always at 60-65 mph. I have had the wheels "balanced" at least 4 times, at goodyear and at small shops.
Nothing ever fixed it properly. (as per mechanics suggestions I did replace drums, rotors, and front wheel bearings... They were wearing out anyways. NO improvement).
Anyways I finally swapped my wheels with another car's wheels, and the car runs great at highway speeds - no vibration. So I am concluding its the wheels or tires which are causing the vibration.

As far as the corrosion, I dont have a spare set of wheels around or a tire mounter so I cant clean up the wheels myself. I'll phone some tire shops and get prices.

thanks

[LakevilleSSEi]

So no matter what, all 4 wheels rattle the car around at 65? Not just 2, or 1?

Do any major curb jumping with that thing? lol

[blye]

Actually just two wheels I swapped. So one or two wheels.
But 3 wheels leak air.

Not sure about the curb jumpin... other people have driven it over the years so who knows...

[LakevilleSSEi]

Swap one wheel out at a time and locate the one causing the issues. Once you find it, take that one in to check for trueness, balance, and possible tire separation. The leaks are easy to take care of 99x out of 100.

[blye]

So I took it to the goodyear shop. They found that the 3 wheels were excessively pitted inside near the lip. Some of the pits are quite deep. They were quite astonished and they took lots of pictures. It seems the wet weather up here adds a lot of moisture inside the tire... the more air I add the more moisture and corrosion happens.

They used a wire brush on the air grinder to get rid of the flakes and corrosion, then applied a liberal amount of tire sealant on the bad bits of the rim, hopefully stopping further corrosion.
New valve stems.

One tire they found out-of-round but they did everything possible to minimize the vibration. I guess I'll have to find a used tire to replace it with another day...

So far no air leaks and a better ride.

thanks for the help.

[LakevilleSSEi]

[imidazol97]

So I took it to the goodyear shop. One tire they found out-of-round but they did everything possible to minimize the vibration. I guess I'll have to find a used tire to replace it with another day...

I was thinking it might be the corrosion on the lip causing seal problems. The flaking of chrome on the inside of the rim behind the spokes is due to that part of the rim not being prepped like the outside part that shows is prepared. In addition, if there is porosity through the rim materials, the inside surface can be coated with a sealer that will block air seeping through that part of the rims. I had checked into possible problems with air seeping because two of my chrome wheels on my leSabre seep. I feel sure both are on the lip. They don't seep when sitting, but seep with the pressure change at the lip when the wheel rolls. I can put soapy water on the rims when I am rotating wheel at home and never find a bubble. It's like the little nail that only seeps air around it when the tread flexes as the weight goes onto and off of the bottom of the tire; can't find it with a hose and soapy water, e.g.

My personal opinion is that the age of your tires has hardened the rubber and affected the internal belts and how they flex. My Michelins have gone hard at 6 years and that's fairly common for them. If you put yours now on a road force balancer, I suspect you'd find they are much higher than 10-12 on the out-of-round rolling reading.

I suspect a set of 4 new tires would really help what you're feeling, preferably road force balanced and carefully dynamically balanced after checking for rolling round.

[BuckyKattNJ]

Wow, you just posted exactly the problems I'm having with my chrome TorqueStar wheels. I even have Tripletreds on the car. LOL.

My problems started 4 years ago. I went through all of the possible solutions, but the wheels in question are just flawed. I found that a partial solution was to buy tire sealer and push the tires off bead, clean up the wheel as well as possible and slap tire sealer over it... but the problem is that the chrome is separating from the wheel so fast and thickly, that even that leaks over time. Buying other TorqueStar rims, I saw the problem come right back.

The problem seems to be with these particular wheels... other wheels might corrode, but do not have the chrome coming off so badly.

While I have bigger problems right now, I'm probably going to buy a set of different Bonne/GP rims for the time being, but since I REALLY like the original rims, I'm looking at needing to get mine rechromed. Trouble is, I can't find anyone to refinish them.