i have talked to wheel vintiques and yes there are now reproduced centers. the repro centers only came out approx 2-3 months ago. so now they make a complete new wheel. buick rally wheels should be in stock at different venders in the months to come. you can order them from summit now and they will be dropped shipped from wheel vintiques. i think summit quoted me 202.00 per wheel for 15 x 8 . shipping is a flat 12.95 for the order. if you were to order from wheel vintiques the wheels are a few dollars more and shipping was 30.00 or so per wheel depending where you are.
My problem is the rusting issue more than anything. If I leave my car outside overnight and it rains, the wheel will start to rust where the water sat. These wheels need to be kept dry as a bone or else. If you look closely at the wheels on my 71 which have been polished a few times, you can see the underlying nickel(?) plating showing through already. The chrome is thin as can be. I had contacted WV about it and their standard answer is "acid rain", some other environmental issue, or bad owner care. I asked them why the other chrome on my car didnt rust just their crappy chrome? Just got a tap dance around that one. The guy I spoke to had an attitude about it to boot. Im very unhappy with the finish quality. I'll never buy another WV wheel ever again...ever. And I'll tell everyone I can how crappy thier product is.
my 15x7 rallyes, thru summit 2005, came from wheel vintiques. the centres are not new, only the rim shells are. my wheels were true and balanced with no problems. i do have two complaints - i have one rim with a spot where the chrome isgoing via rust and one there rim where a small strip of black paint was missing from day one.
I cant be the only one with rust issues on these wheels? Jennifer's WV Magnum 500 wheels are totally destroyed from being left outside. I find it funny how 40 year old rallyes can be just fine outside, but new rallyes rust up in a day or two of rain.
You may be seeing the results of their process adjustments due to the mandatory elimination of Hexavalent Chromium a few years ago. I was going to try & write up my own thoughts about why corrosion resistance can be worse while their costs and difficulty in process control increase, but Wikipedia did it better: Devon
It's not just wheels. Try getting the 68/69 chrome air cleaner lid from The Parts Place. Started pitting/rusting inside the house in 2 months :spank:
inside the house??? :shock: Wheels are HUGE on how the car works....STILL have a vibe spot at 39-43 mph or so, took several tries to get them that good..basically wheels are out of round, not much a guy can do, rims have been on car for couple years so no point calling them...wasted enough time and money on those things. I just make a point of never staying in that speed, but till should that be required with new rims?? Seems everything is crap these days.
True some of the chemicals might have changed due to EPA regs over the years, but it is still possible to get a beautiful, spot on and durable chrome job these days. The shop just has to do the job right and not cut corners. It costs $500 plus for a nice triple chrome plating job on an already nice bumper core. Wheel mfg's dont put this type of plating on mass produced wheels since it would drive the cost up and away from most of their customers. A set of (4) Buick Ralley's would be $1,500 plus out the door and ready to go, around twice what a set from WV costs. As an example, what does Kleiner charge to restore a set of WG's to factory correct, concourse detail? I dont know myself, but I would almost bet you would be looking at $1,500 plus for top quality work.
Getting a wheel Lug centric balanced is a major pain around here. The shops look at me like I'm nuts when I try to explain the difference between hub centric and lug centric balancing.
Shouldn't all rallye wheels be lug balanced? What is the difference between an orig. wheel and a rebuilt with old center and new rimshell? As far as I know no one is reproducing the rallye center.
How about the American Racing AR500's? I always thought they would look good on a older Buick.------------------->
Maybe I'm lucky around here. I just called a few places and one of them had the adapter to do it. I think more and more places are getting the necessary equipment because some of the newer custom wheels have to be balanced that way. Two sets of wheels I have do have NEW centers. They were bought a few years back. Then the builders ran out of them because they came from China or some other place that stopped producing them. That is why the big name places stopped listing them for a while or they were long term backordered. If you are using a used center section it should be ok to regular balance it. I have custom ones of those also. I'm thinking that it is hard to produce a stamping that accurately aligns the hub and the lugs. GM probably had the company that made them come up with some high tolerence machines and the Chinese stuff probably won't/can't get it as accurate for cheap. I believe some of the problem with the chrome is the new stuff is what you might call "show chrome". Compared to a factory chrome wheel it gleams. I'm sure GM specified some "lifetime" of a minimum of 10 years or something like that where it could be exposed to the weather without rust and the final look was secondary. The new stuff is just worried about the look and probably figures on higher maintainence to keep them nice or don't leave them out in the weather. One of my chrome ones was on the car sitting outside and started to develope a rust spot where something took a leak on it. I've had different aftermarket wheels on my cars over the years and all of them required high maintainence to keep them nice when they are used on a daily basis, the chrome especially and even the aluminum. None of them were what you would call high dollar stuff so I don't know how they would work.
I bought American Racing AR500 8x17 wheels for my car. Three of them was leaking (small holes because of bad welding) Bad quality, but the wheels looks nice on the car !
