Cor wheel breaks apart, worth reading about.

[Sean-_1]

http://www.nagtroc.org/forums/index.php ... s-warning/

[krash]

Wow, thats pretty crazy. Sucks that they're being gay about it

I attended a track day on May 6th 2012 at Auto Club Speedway with my good friends at HG Motorsports. This was just a track day and by no means, a competitive event. I had run a few sessions on the course and I decided have a go with an instructor in my passenger seat. When I came in to turn 16 of the “Sports Car” layout, instead of turning, the car proceeded to skid to the ground and I went straight off of the course. I looked in my rearview mirror and saw my wheel rolling out behind me. I knew that all of my wheels had been torqued properly, as the instructor did it himself. From the way that the car had ended up, I immediately had a feeling that the front passenger side wheel had broken. Sure enough, as you can see from the pictures, that was the case. Keep in my mind that I was also riding on a brand new set of Michelin Pilot Super Sport tires. Because the wheel had come off, the car rode the 14.25” inch disc of the AP Racing 6 piston front brake kit. In addition, the wheel and tire had bounced around in the front fender, inside the wheel well, causing severe body damage.

HG Motorsports was kind enough to put the car on their trailer that they brought their race car on and tow it back to San Diego, while they drove their race all the way back to San Diego. The car was brought to Heinz Geitz Autohaus, a sister company of HG Motorsports, where they were nice it enough to leave it on one of their lifts until we could get some new wheels on the car.

About the wheels: My father had purchased these wheels brand new from Peter at ACG back in March of 2011-- Cor Precise in 20”x9.5 in the front and 20”x10.5” in the rear with a brushed center and polished lips. A week before the event at Auto Club Speedway, I had the center of the wheels painted gold. They were not powder coated, nor were they disassembled. They were professionally prepared and painted by a well known shop that does wheel repair work and prepares race cars.

After the accident, photographs and word got around quickly. The very next day, Peter from ACG called to let me know that he had heard what had happened and that he had already been in contact with Cor. Cor wanted us to send the wheels back to them for testing to find out what could have cause the problem. After “analysis,” Cor denied the responsibility and determined that the wheels would not be covered under warranty.

Our attorney sent a letter to Cor asking them to reimburse us for the wheels and pay for the damages to the car. Their reasoning for denying responsibility (see email) was that because the wheels had been painted and because I was at a track event, they were not under warranty and therefore Cor would not pay for the damages. Conveniently, Cor actually added the “track use” specification to their list of what denies warranty after we had brought this issue to their attention. Luckily, two days after the incident happened, I actually took a screenshot of their warranty page before the change. As you can see, the original page did not include the specification of “track use.”

Cor states that they are denying warranty because the wheels were used on the “track” when they have conflicting information on their website that promotes the use of their wheels on “tracks”, in “race” type functions, etc. I have posted photos of various instances where Cor uses these phrases throughout their website. I apologize in advance if some screenshots may be difficult to read.

For those of you who have a set of Cor wheels on your car, I suggest you have inspect them immediately. For those of you contemplating about purchasing a set of Cor wheels, I suggest you look elsewhere for a set of wheels.

Email from Cor to the dude's attorney is in the link.

[AZhitman]

What a crock of crap.

Normally, I'd make a wisecrack about them being unhappy that they were mounted on a Mustang... but this is some BS.

Time to help spread the word.

[float_6969]

Wow, that is teh suck. Cor has never seen NICO in full boycotting/retribution force. They're not gonna know what hit them. Bad move Cor.

[Rev_D21]

I read it all and COR is not handling the situation correctly. They are acting like a crappy Chinese body kit company.

[krash]

If they think a coat of paint is what caused the wheel to fail, then they must be using some crap metal and a horrible forging process.

XXR/Rota FTW (Sorry Greg )

[sx moneypit]

Hell ,i've never even heard of that company.

[AZhitman]

Looks like blingy wheels for hard-parking "ballers".

If the wheels are supposedly ok for a Ferrari, a GTR, and a RANGE FREAKING ROVER, they should be able to handle a damn Mustang.

Pure assclownery from a company that puts style above substance. Fail.

[C-Kwik]

If they think a coat of paint is what caused the wheel to fail, then they must be using some crap metal and a horrible forging process.

XXR/Rota FTW (Sorry Greg )

The quality of material doesn't have anything to do with whether a chemical can attack it or not. While I'd be skeptical that this is the case here, can't rule it out objectively without a proper failure analysis. Corrosion can increase the stress as the effective cross-sectional area will be reduced. There is likely a form of fatigue involved here, but whether or not the stress was increased by something the owner had done to the wheels is not clear.

My overall thoughts on the matter:

That the company changed their warranty language isn't directly relevant. The warranty language at the time of purchase should be what is used. There could be some argument if the company changed the warranty language with the intent to try and apply it to this case. The company's lawyer would be stupid to try and argue the current warranty language in court though (if it gets to that point). From what I can read of the prior language, its a little grey, but does allow enough room that one could interpret it such that track use may void the warranty as the spirit of a track event is to drive in a competitive manner. It is however, implicit at best.

Not sure they have much of an argument with the painting save for some chemical attack or if the wheel was disassembled to paint it. I don't see anything that gives them much leeway to deny the warranty otherwise.

All this said, seems to be a lot of trouble to go through to deny a warranty on one wheel. Short of finding solid evidence that something the owner did caused the failure beyond the scope of the ambiguities of the warranty, they are going to lose a lot more than they save on the cost of the wheel. I would hope the company has at least done a simple failure analysis using an optical microscope to rule out any causes that might affect their wheels even under normal use. If such a condition exists, and normal use loads are enough to induce fatigue, then its only a matter of time before this starts happening to others using the same wheel. If that's the case and they don't address it, this case will be the least of their problems.

[alphapig]

From having a few Mustang owners as friends, I've come to realize that they just don't understand the difference between nice wheels and knock offs. Friend with CoBrah refuses to purchase anything quality, and thinks RPF1's are rice.

Quite sad given that Mustangs have 5x114.3 bolt pattern.

This dude should NEVER have used those wheels for anything serious.

Not that it's entirely his fault... Crappy company is crappy, they will fight tooth and nail rather than pay up and salvage their reputation.

[krash]

If they think a coat of paint is what caused the wheel to fail, then they must be using some crap metal and a horrible forging process.

XXR/Rota FTW (Sorry Greg )

The quality of material doesn't have anything to do with whether a chemical can attack it or not. While I'd be skeptical that this is the case here, can't rule it out objectively without a proper failure analysis.

Sure, but I've never seen automotive paint corrode a wheel so much that it takes enough material away from outside the spoke area to cause the wheel to break. Heck, I've never seen paint corrode a wheel, period.

[AZhitman]

After spending over a decade "behind-the-scenes" I've learned a few things about product delivery (backwards, from retailer to supplier to wholesaler to manufacturer, sometimes with a couple additional middlemen in between). Unfortunately, you really don't know WHAT you're getting anymore in a lot of cases.

As a generic example, to my knowledge, there's only 2 or 3 companies that manufacture the actual wire that eventually becomes a coil spring. By the time those springs hit the store shelf, they've been powdercoated a different color of the brand's choosing, relabeled, packaged in fancy boxes, and touted as the best thing on the market. But theoretically (and I'll just pull three names out of my a$$), Tein, K-sport and Eibach springs COULD have all been cut and wound from the same length of wire.

There are a LOT of wheel companies (especially these "boutique" companies) that pop up out of nowhere. They don't have their own design teams, they don't manufacture anything, and they don't know what the hell they're selling... Look at the show floor at SEMA - there's literally HUNDREDS of wheel sellers you've NEVER heard of. As such, even the company themselves may not know what the issue is, because THEY aren't even sure if the materials they sell are from the exact same original batch of raw material as that set of XXR / Rota / MB Motoring wheels in the booth across the aisle.

I know a thing or two about Risk Management (yeah, I have a day job). What COR, as a seller, SHOULD have done is this: IMMEDIATELY request the wheel be returned to them for inspection. Ask the owner NOT to discuss / post the failure until an investigation is completed (whether or not there's a true 'investigation' is of no consequence). Send an independent appraiser to the owner's home to inspect the car and estimate repairs. In exchange for a signed "STFU" contract, COR should have issued remediation in the amount of the repairs to the car, a replacement set of wheels, and maybe a few bucks for the owner's hassles. Even if this cost the company $5K, what's the harm?

Instead, they issue this "do-nothing" statement: http://www.corwheels.com/statement-from-cor-wheels/

Sorry, but as Jesda would say, this is, "DEAR MAD FOLK, WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS, SINCERELY SOMEONE."

Their unwillingness to do this tells me ONE thing: They're not financially viable enough to do so. This is quite possibly a company on a shoestring budget, probably an offshoot of another, more lucrative, endeavor. The prospect of losing $5K is unacceptable, even if it means salvaging the reputation. There's no "attorneys" involved - I doubt they can afford a product liability lawyer (anyone notice they're an LLC?)

Oh, wait: Cor International, LLC filed as a Florida Limited Liability on Wednesday, September 06, 2006 in the state of Florida and is currently active. The company's line of business includes Whol Industrial/Service Paper/Shipping Supplies. The owner is listed as previously being the General Manager at Kinetik/Avus/OZ wheels.

Interestingly, he's also listed as affiliated with Axiom Wheels (http://www.ptswheels.com/site/?page_id=138) whose website bears a lot of the same language you'll see on the COR Wheels website.

Whoops, here's another affiliation: Howey Wheels (http://www.howeyindustries.com/axiom/ax-503a.html), whose website contains a lot of the same language on the other two / three / I've lost count / sites.

So, if this ultimately tanks the brand name (and it will, judging from the fact that this issue has elevated to the #2 position in Google search for "COR Wheels"), they'll just wipe out the site, throw a different name on them, and keep on selling.

XXR / SportMax comes to mind... Hmmm.

[C-Kwik]

Sure, but I've never seen automotive paint corrode a wheel so much that it takes enough material away from outside the spoke area to cause the wheel to break. Heck, I've never seen paint corrode a wheel, period.

Me neither, but seeing as how lots of things we paint are metal, paint companies would probably avoid chemicals not suitable for use on common metals. Paint removers, on the other hand, are more likely to have chemicals that could cause problems. Or a painter who doesn't know how certain chemicals react with certain metals might use a poor choice of chemical to remove the paint. I'm not saying this is the case here or that its even likely. Statistically, any part of the paint process seems unlikely, especially if what the owner says is true about how the wheel was painted. However, nothing short of a reasonable failure analysis would actually rule it out.

a seller, SHOULD have done is this: IMMEDIATELY request the wheel be returned to them for inspection. Ask the owner NOT to discuss / post the failure until an investigation is completed (whether or not there's a true 'investigation' is of no consequence). Send an independent appraiser to the owner's home to inspect the car and estimate repairs. In exchange for a signed "STFU" contract, COR should have issued remediation in the amount of the repairs to the car, a replacement set of wheels, and maybe a few bucks for the owner's hassles. Even if this cost the company $5K, what's the harm?

Its always easy to make such a call in hindsight. But its unlikely the company expected this to blow up like it did. It certainly could have been handled better as things progressed, but I think most companies would have handled the initial response similarly. Some might do it your way, but it would probably be the exception.

According to their statement, they offered to refund the wheels. And it appears their warranty does include language that excludes any consequential damage. Not sure if that can be upheld in CA or not, but they are essentially honoring the warranty claim at this point. The resultant damage to the car would not have been covered by the warranty even if they originally honored the warranty claim. Warranties exist as a contract between the buyer and manufacturer specifically because of things like this. Not arguing with you by stating this, just pointing out the legalities.

[Razi]

Even stupid Rotas get molested in strange chemicals and painted without ejecting itself from the rattle canned 240sx it was once bolted to.
I don't know how they were building their wheels if they can break like that.
I bet they cost a pretty penny as well.

[AZhitman]

Yep.

And, for the record, I've subjected a LOT of wheels to some pretty brutal abuse... Not all were "upscale" wheels. Never an issue.

Understood - one guy, one situation. But still.

I'm still trying to figure out how they're "four-piece wheels".

[s0m3th1ngAZ]

There's an update... muddies the situation a bit.
http://jalopnik.com/5954352/cor-respond ... -on-forums

[C-Kwik]

I'm still trying to figure out how they're "four-piece wheels".

Well, they're definitely 4 pieces now...

[sx moneypit]

[krash]

Even stupid Rotas get molested in strange chemicals and painted without ejecting itself from the rattle canned 240sx it was once bolted to.
I don't know how they were building their wheels if they can break like that.
I bet they cost a pretty penny as well.

Thats basically what I was getting at. People buy XXRs, shower them in aircraft stripper, paint then hot pink, curb them, aitcraft stripper them again, paint them 14 more colors, etc. And they dont ackey-break apart.

I'm still trying to figure out how they're "four-piece wheels".

Well, they're definitely 4 pieces now...

I think the barrel is two pieces, then the wheel face, then......centercap?

Also https://www.google.com/#hl=en&output=se ... 59&bih=545 Well that sucks for them.

[AZhitman]

There's an update... muddies the situation a bit.
http://jalopnik.com/5954352/cor-respond ... -on-forums

That's what I posted above (their response).

LOL @ C-Kwik.

[300ZXttZMAN]

Wow. I wonder what was going through the drivers mind at that time?

[Hijacker]

Wow. I wonder what was going through the drivers mind at that time?

"Oh s***!"

[krash]

[s0m3th1ngAZ]

Reminds me of this video.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv4m41viy4I[/youtube]

[AZhitman]

I'm still trying to figure out how they're "four-piece wheels".

Well, they're definitely 4 pieces now...

I mean, we could get ridiculous and say my Weds Kranze Cerberus II's were 31-piece wheels... outer barrel, inner barrel, center, and 28 bolts holding the whole thing together.