rsyed

Guys,

well had to change from my winter tires to summer ones since I am having the 167 with summer tires"legalized" tomorrow for my car, and for that they want to inspect my car with the tires and 167 wheels in freaking winter like temperatures here in vienna - not even a week ago did we have 2 foot snow..

anyways, my winter set (166 8,5 all around) had 10 mm spacer, my summer has 3 mm spacers. so when i took off the wheels, i had to take of the 10mm spacers. the spacers were difficult to remove, even though they have only been on for 3 weeks and i have put sufficient grease on them before mounting it - so managed to get one off, and while taking the second one, i realized the mounting ring had a different colour (somewhat whitish), anyway pulled on it. i will let you look at the pictures first before you make a verdict. i think it had a material fault:

iversonm

That's unusual. I'm not sure it is a material fault per se. It does not look like metal fatigue separated the ring from the flange; you would not see that smooth cone shape where the pilot diameter separated from the flange.

It looks like the spacer is a two piece construction. Rather than cut it from a single piece of Aluminum, they have welded a small ring to the flange to form the pilot diameter, probably via laser welding to keep the distortion low.

I'd guess it failed for one of the following reasons:

1. Some contaminants caused the pilot diameter to get stuck in the wheel bore, and you broke it on disassembly. (not very likely, IMO)

2. The lugs were slightly loose, allowing too much pressure on the pilot diameter, causing it to break away from the flange. (possible)

3. Improper laser welding, or they machined away too much weld when finishing the part. (possible)