two bent rims, what up with this?

[pyromanic]

My 85 GL wagon came with those chrome spokes found on some of these older Soobs. a Couple months ago, after I rebuilt the front suspension, I still had some shimmy and pulling to the left, so I took it back to Les Schwab, where I had bought the tires, to see if perhaps it was a tire problem. They put the left front wheel/tire on the computor, and showed me the graphic which was indicating a bent rim. I wasn't ready to buy rims, so we just put it on the rear. Shimmy and pulling to left was gone. All was well.

 

Fast forward to last two weeks ago: Even though when I replace the tie-rod ends I had got the alighnment close enough to correct for the car to handle well, I took it to a shop for a professional alighnment to make sure. An hour later, shes handling perfect.

 

Last week, I take come out of a parking lot in town, and don't see a storm at a curb on my right. 5 inch drop, BAM, only going a little less than 15MPH, but she did hit kinda hard.

 

So all last week she's pulling to left again. More of a drift than a pull, but very irratating. I figured I ruined my alignment, maybe bent something, even though I couldn't find anything bent with the naked eye. So like I'm way pissed.

 

But last night I'm thinking about shelling out another 59 bucks for another alighnment, then I thought, well, if it was a bent rim the first time she pulled, maybe now?

 

This morning I swappedtires on the right, front to rear, rear to fron. Went for a drive. Drives straight. No drifting, no pulling.

 

So apparently, I now have two bent rims on the rear. Fortunately, I have ordered new rims from Shady.

 

So whats up with these Chrome Soob 13" rims? They soft or something? Poor materials? The shouldn't bend that easy should they? I mean come on, these cars are pretty light. (On the other hand, I'd sure rather bend rims than suspension components)

 

Any body else have any issues with these rims?

 

Pyro

[Turbone]

How old are they? Metal fatigue will happen easily after 20+yrs.

[LPGsuperchargedBrumby]

How old are they? Metal fatigue will happen easily after 20+yrs.

 

in my 9 years of engineering i've seen chromeing and galvanising do some funny things to steel

 

if your rims where designed to be painted not chromed then a different steel type may have been used to what would normaly be used for chrome wheels.

 

galvanising steel seems to make it more brittlec chromeing seems to do what ever it wants harden or soften the base material unless its treated right

[Ross]

Yeah, if the wheels were chromed when they shouldn't have been, it could affect the strength. Fatigue will result in a fracture, not softening of the material.

I had the same thing happen on my Holden, had to swap with the spare wheel. Don't know what the cause was.

 

Loose wheel nuts will allow the rim to bend much more easily.

[edrach]

If the wheels started with the standard '85 and up wagon wheels before they were chromed your problem is the wagon wheels themselves. These later model wagon wheels were prone to bending from day one....even when new; my understanding is that FHI even issued a service memo on the wheels years ago. I stopped using the wagon wheels when I had twelve of them checked at the local tire place and found 8 of them were no longer true! I switched to alloy wheels on my daily driver ('86 wagon) at that time and was never bothered by shimmy again.

[pyromanic]

Well, thanks for thoughts guys. These are the chrome wheels you can see on the USMB Wheel page, I guess they were a factory option on some '85 rigs.

 

Seems like the puzzle is solved. Apparently they were crap to begin with 20 years ago.

I have plenty of 13 inch white spokes laying around, but I'm not gonnal spend any money having tires swapped onto them. Just need to hang in there untill Shady Irishmen comes through with those 15" rims.

 

She's running true for now, as long as I can keep these last two straight front wheels out of the potholes!