Warranty...........poor chrome job for sure. A good Chrome job cost $$$
Every chrome job begins with polishing the part to a fine luster. This helps seal in impurities in castings and prevents the subsequent platings from "dropping into" minute surface imperfections in the material.
Cast wheels particularly must be carefully polished to seal the surface and provide a smooth face for the nickel and chrome plates.
Chroming hardware requires careful preparation as well, especially to keep from losing anything.
Special anodes--which resemble pencil-thick wires and are intended to provide a positive charge near the to-be-plated surface--fit into wheels and other parts to help evenly distribute the electroplating materials.
When placed in the chemical bath, the item to be chromed is subjected to high-voltage, low-current electricity to promote deposition of the plating material from sacrificial anode to the item, which is the cathode.
Chroming's another method of cranking up the surface brightness but it's a totally different process. It is more correctly called a plating process. It's a tricky, difficult method of plating that takes skilled workers to do well. Moreover, there are myriad tricks employed by the high-end chrome shops to make sure the coverage of the chrome on any part is as uniform as possible.
Next comes a plating of copper buffed. This soft metal helps seal in the pores of the metal and provides a smoother surface for the following material to adhere to. If you've seen bad chrome jobs that are full of pits, you can bet that either the polishing or copper-plating job was done hurried. The process is completed with 20 min. nickel and chrome.
My H.r.e.'s With Chrome Centers Started Pealing After 2yrs And They Were 6 Grand So Sometimes You Dont Get What You Pay For, Finally I Got Fed Up,im In The Middle Of Having The M Stripped And Painted To Match The Car Good Luck
The car has never been driven in the snow... I bought these in July of '05 and the corrosion started before winter set in.
What it is is very thin chrome and the effects of brake dust. I have had a set of polished wheels on another one of my cars for two years now and they show NO signs of corrosion.
Do you think a wheel mfr should 'expect' that the wheels will see some brake dust and that this is a 'normal, reasonable use' of an automotive wheel?
Like most of you, I wash my car at the very least, weekly...but still got this corrosion within 3-4 months of installing these wheels.
There are places on the face of the wheels where the chrome is so thin, it's yellowing....and pitting.
BTW, did you guys know that the "warranty" that most aftermarket wheel mfr's use is not worth the paper it's printed on? They give themselves so many outs that you can't even mount the wheels or they'll void it.
Last edited by Doug Harden; 08-14-2006 at 08:32 AM.
Keep us up to date...........be interesting to know how you make out.
$1200 is enough for a good chrome job
Vendor test time
Good luck
Well after 5 months of emailing back and forth...I "think' we might be close to settling this issue...albeit with me bearing all costs involved, short of the replacement wheel costs....not much of a warranty I say....
I'll be out an additional over $300.00 to have my "warranty" enforced....
Well after 5 months of emailing back and forth...I "think' we might be close to settling this issue...albeit with me bearing all costs involved, short of the replacement wheel costs....not much of a warranty I say....
I'll be out an additional over $300.00 to have my "warranty" enforced....
If you can put the shipping on a CC........once you get the new wheels.......dispute that maybe
Might consider using Rejex on the wheels. You can use it on the whole car. It is a sealer as oppsoed to wax.
Not to stir up the pot Doug. But if you got the cheap offshore wheels that sell for $600 chromed I'd say you got what you paid for. But paying $1200 for them I'd say you got burnt. If the vendor isn't willing to completely replace it and using some bogus warranty rules. Then they should be exposed so others don't go down the same path.
Wow! I have a set of OE Replicas that I picked up from Corvettes of Houston for $699 for the set (2001 factory Z06 size wheels), and they still look perfect! I've had them for over a year now and nothing like that!!! You are taking it better than I would have...and I paid half as much!
Corvette Store
Anyone's chrome wheels look like this?
I bought these in July of '05 and the corrosion started before winter set in.
