[Chrysler300] Re: Danger of wheel failure unless the rims are replaced by str...

["Wayne Graefen" <wgraefen@xxxxxxx>]

Since I have never had a wheel failure on a collector car other than one in the '30s which had been slid into a curb by a previous owner (the centers cracked to the mounting bolt holes), I'm going to relate a former business partner's experience.  
His '49 Hudson wearing bias ply tires cracked its first wheel at somewhere around 250,000 miles.  The car had seen a great deal of interstate driving at speeds while pulling a light trailer with the car itself well loaded.  It only cracked enough to let the air out of the tubeless tire.  About 50K miles later a second wheel cracked similarly and shortly thereafter a third.  None of these were catastrophic, just flattened the tire.  He found other used Hudson wheels for those three which almost certainly were of considerably lower mileage.  Eventually a 4th bias tired wheel also cracked flattening the tire.  Radial wide whitewalls had now become available in the hobby and were mounted on the 4 lower mileage original Hudson wheels.  It would be reasonable to assume that all the factory wheels were under 200,000 miles.  That same car has had a couple more sets of radials and is well over 600,000 miles.  It has not had a split of a wheel with a radial tire mounted to it.
My thought is that there are so many variables here which must include how every driver of each car drove the car, how it was loaded, the tire pressures that were maintained, whether trailers were towed, speeds driven, the quality and brand of each tire ever mounted as well its appropriateness of size relative to the wheel manufacturer's recommendations, the streets driven on, and the total mileage under each of these conditions and considerations that it is impossible in my opinion to blame the wheel or the construction of the tire for failure. 

Wayne

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