Here's one more possible incident: March 2012:
dear friend's my friend has purchased new xuv500 recently after having driven it for 1500 kms very carefully as it is in running in condition to his utter shock and dismay the front driver side wheel just broke off and car landed on the bumper on informing the dealer india garage bangalore in a matter of 10 hrs they came and took the car on a truck to their showroom as we live about 300 kms from bl'r for repair now it comes down to the fact that a brand new car having such a major fault and very bad quality control delivering such cars to customers who after paying so much money put their family and their lives at great risk kindly advise as to what can be done now
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Originally Posted by GTO Here's another report of a damaged alloy wheel |
That looks 100% like an external impact to me. Even the BHPian who posted it said:
As per him, driver was driving on a narrow and rough road (usual Indian road) ... got the left wheels off the road and applied breaks ... both him and driver heard a sound ... Santro guy stopped as he too heard some sound.
... I think it's safe to exclude this incident / wide-spoke alloy design.
Problem seems to be only with the "Sporty Speed-Rims" (shown on left), and not the Wide-Spoke design:
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Originally Posted by Gannu_1 Quite possibly bad metallurgy (quality of casting). M&M should insist the OEM (or a good third party) to do the fatigue tests of this wheel from a batch of these cars that were sold. |
If it's a casting/manufacturing issue : it will probably be limited to a few batches.
If it's a design issue : it would probably be more wide-spread
Chances are its a combination of a weak point in the design (which wouldn't be an issue on it's own), combined with some casting issues.
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Originally Posted by M35 I always thought if over -tightening of wheel nuts on these brittle alloy designs could have any adverse effect ? |
Absolutely something that popped into my head too. While over-tightening can't be entirely responsible for this, it could perhaps have a small part to play.
The size & positioning of the holes could certainly have a part to play in the inherent design weakness too!
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Originally Posted by humyum Very strange, Alloy wheels are something which never really break, bend yes, crack yes, but break is something unheard of. |
Nope - I think it's actually the opposite.
Alloy wheels are
MORE likely to break when compared to steel wheels, which will continue to bend even past that threshold.
^ That applies to cast alloys (the huge majority of wheels on our cars). Forged alloys (the high end, lighter, stronger versions) might actually be more prone to
shatter when the impact received crosses their threshold.
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Originally Posted by Sanjunair5 Mahindra has sold over 100,000 XUVs, most of them with alloy rims. And in this thread I see fewer than 5 instances of cracked rims being discussed, which is a very low sample to jump to conclusions. |
Question is - how many of those 100,000 XUVs had this alloy design?
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Originally Posted by venkyhere 1) alloys are supposed to be "cast" as a single piece (OR) in case of ultra high end super cars - forged from a single block. Could it be that the alloy wheel supplier is cheating M&M by providing inferior multiple-cast-pieces-welded-together-into-one-wheel ?
2) are the dealers playing a game here, by swapping OEM alloys with aftermarket duplicate ones before handing over the car to the customer, and making a few bucks on the sly ? |
1) Nope. Extremely unlikely.
2) Nope. Extremely unlikely.
It's probably a quality control issue, and nothing more convoluted than that.
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Originally Posted by Sanjunair5 Ofcourse an OEM or Mahindra may want to investigate specific instances. But this is not a, sky has fallen down situation yet. |
Exactly, and that's why this thread exists - to bring that to light.
I agree with you that we shouldn't jump to conclusions, however, I also think there is a pattern here.
Think of it this way, can you even find 1 picture of any other Indian car where the alloy has broken just like this (at low speed with no claim of impact).
It's a unique type of break that points to a weakness in the design or manufacture of the wheels.
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Originally Posted by raj_5004 The OE wheels which come with the W8 should be kept out of this discussion. One crack in a particular vehicle does not say anything. We have no idea under what circumstances it broke. |
Agreed, it will probably cause unnecessary confusion / paranoia with the XUV owners reading this thread.
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Originally Posted by raj_5004 - Hold the sale of these "speed" rims for the moment
- A simply investigation of these 5 incidents - where these from the same batch?
- If they were from the same batch, maybe that batch was faulty.
- If they are not from the same batch, maybe there is a design issue with these rims or even serious - the manufacturer lacks serious quality control. In both cases, Mahindra should just stop sourcing these rims from them.
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^ + 1000000
EXCELLENT point about it probably just being 1 batch.
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Originally Posted by Captain Slow I can see some marks on tyres? Could these be because of some kind of Impact? |
That doesn't look like an impact to me.
Looks like the wheel slid on the road a bit, before rotating some more and coming to a rest.