gwf545

I developed a slow leak in my left front wheel and found it to be due to a 1-2" hairline crack on the edge of the inside of the rim with no other visible damage present. I have stock wheels on my '05 545i Sport. BMW says it's not a warranty issue since they are not aware of any defects with these wheels and I can understand their position. However, I have not, as far as I can recall, ever hit a significant pot hole or other obstruction to cause this. I have had two sets of tires on the car, the last set was installed over a year ago. I am wondering if the crack could have been caused by mounting & dismounting tires, espc. with those hard as rock runflats, and just recently started to leak? Or is this just one of those things that comes up occasionally with low profile tires?

Freewilly

Can you show us some pictures?

Rudy

I don't remember too many issues with hairline cracks but any time the subject of a cracked wheel comes up, I think of JDN and this thread:
http://forums.e60.net/index.php?showtopic=6523

gwf545

Thanks. I searched this site and the web pretty extensively yesterday, found the above but couldn't find much on this specific problem. One other member, JCHouston, had a similar problem and we exchanged PM's. I was just curious if anyone else had a similar problem or might have an explanation.

I will try to get a picture later, but it really is just a hair line split or crack right from the edge of the rim inward toward the center. It's so fine it's hard to see and it leaks tiny little bubbles of air very slowly when submerged.

Ricracing

Thers's been some reports on this site of driver errors and potholes resulting in that the rim have been defected.

Even a small crack will result in total destruction in the long run.

Change to rim at once for your safty!

kscarrol

It is not unheard of. I recently had a nail in my tire and the technician came out to look. I had told him I was loosing air very slowly but I could not see a nail. At this point he said could be a cracked rim and that they had been seeing a number of them lately. Turned out to be a nail!

As far as the cracked rims, I got the impression he was referring to the poor condition of the roads post Katrina (lack of upkeep!) and not some manufacturing/design flaw. Guess my point is that is possible to have cracked the rim without having the major, visible damage that you'd expect from hitting a large pot hole. Not saying it's right, just possible. Comes back to the metal alloy that BMW is using in its wheels...

pennetta

I had a cracked rear rim together with a slow leak; about a week before the FTM came on. I had it repaired for $135.00 and its been fine ever since.

info@trinityautosport

i was just about to post about that too.. well i also remember that about during that time and in addition to JDN, there were maybe one or two other members who experienced cracked rims, and they all had oem style 124 wheels.

antconsig

Sounds like you and I went through the same ordeal, sort of. I had replica's on my 07 530i, M5's, and I got slow leak and flat and BOOM, 350 for a new tire. Okay, want to be safe even though I saw no damage on tire the inside was wrecked. 2 weeks later, BOOM, 350 new tire. Okay, What THE FU*K! Now me and the tire store guy are like best friends, I seen him more than my dog, so I go back, pissed, they look "OH you have a hairline craxk right here, must have been there for a while" Really? A While like 700.00 + mounting and BS (No road hazard on 19in) in tires ago, or more recently? "Oh it's not our fault, we don't this and that.....blah bal" Long Story short the joker who sold me the rims from CA (I'm in CT) gave me grief I had 75.00 in shipping costs and he gave me more BS when the rim got there. He said "NO manufacturer error you curbed it" I said the side wall is clean, look at it and tell me where I curbed it and I drove less than 800 miles on them and no real highway/city driving and no damage to the front of the wheel. He finally sent me the new one, which for all I knew was a refurbished cracked one, and I got the tire guy to cave and replace what turned out to the be the 3rd tire (2nd one shot worse than #1) and mount it on the new rim.

Then I packaged the son of #@#$ together on Ebay, shipped 4 perfectly good and fairly new tires to Fla, took about 100.00 loss all together mostly from shipping etc. The replica's were only 999.00 in 19in so I really only had the tires the first time around and they weren't no 350.00 either because they were packaged then. I sucked it up, coughed up the dough and got the OEM's and had no problems with them.