Well, I took the wheel and tire to a local tire shop and the tire's destroyed. The inner rubber lining or whatever was a pile of rubber dust in the bottom of the tire. They told me that I was lucky I couldn't get 50 psi of air in the tire because it probably would have blown up in my face. Okay. So the tire's shot... Is there anything they can do about the cheap ass rim? Sure! What I was thinking - Take a BFH (Big F*cking Hammer) to it. Three whacks into the deal, all the paint flaked off the area of the bend and the edge of the lip was all chewed up. I stopped the guy and said, "You know what? Before you put much more labor into this, the wheel's trashed and I can't put it back on the car looking like that - Functional or not."
So that's where I stand - Minus a wheel and a tire. I guess I'll go back out tomorrow (when I'm not all pissed off) and put the winter tires and wheels back on. Now WheelMax (where I got the pieces of trash) had a policy where you can only buy wheels & tires in packages (except under certain circumstances), but they discontinued the Exel RH-5 wheels, so I guess that doesn't really help, does it?
Ugh. What a pain in the ass. So even if the wheel was repairable, the lip would have to be sanded down and the whole wheel would have to be repainted to match the other three.
I guess what I'll probably end up doing is selling the three remaining wheels and tires and write this off as a lesson learned - Never buy cheap wheels. I already tried looking for any individuals selling just one wheel and the only luck I had was someone selling a complete set of the RH-5's in White - Which, obviously, will not work.
This sucks. I've gotta' come up with something before Carlisle in July because the car definitely will not be show-worthy will black steelies.














