I thought I would follow-up with a question I had about the PVD coated wheels Torque Thrust wheels I bought back in August.
For anyone who remembers, I found that the center caps for the wheels partially cover the lug holes - this means that the caps must be removed before one can access the lugs to remove the wheel or even to just check the torque of the nuts, a safety procedure that as you know is highly recommended. With the caps in place, neither standard or thin walled sockets can be used to access the lugs.
In order to remove the caps, you have to remove 5 tiny allen-head screws. To top it off, the heads in the screws seem to be hit or miss -- for some of the screws I had to use a different size allen head wrench. Some were too shallow as well. Can you imagine dealing with this issue in foul weather, at night or both?
Upon finding this issue , after asking about it here and looking online, I went straight to American Racing via their website. That was back in August.
To this date I still have had no satisfactory solution presented to me. I should not have to spend additional $ and buy "tuner lugs" because of a mal-designed center cap. Not to mention, lose that special tool you need for removing splined lug nuts and you are screwed on the side of the road!
So I have been trying to pursue it.
For months I was told they were working on it. Finally, a month ago or so, I received a set of caps with crudely-milled divots in the caps in order to clear the lug holes. The issue here is two fold: First, what they did appears to be very "shade tree mechanic" and sloppy. They are varying depths, and they left burs all over them. Secondly, the caps they sent me are "polished aluminum" and look to be (very) used with scratches and gouges in them. When I asked about this, they said they could not do the divots on PVD coated caps as it would break the integrity of the finish. So the caps look way different than the wheels just being polished aluminum versus the PVD.
What I expected was a set of caps that would have been engineered to follow the wheel hub contours properly and be finished in the same PVD I paid for. What I got was something I considered very sloppy and completely unacceptable. My wife even said "Oh, you can't use THOSE!" when she saw one on the car. And she is waaaaaaaay less anal retentive than me when it comes to car stuff.
I have since emailed them back and said that this was not acceptable...that I expected more when I bought these wheels and that I could have accomplished the same thing on my home drill press but did NOT because I knew it would look sloppy. They have said they will look into it.
I have attached some pictures to show you what I am dealing with.
You can see in the ones they sent me , thyey expose part of the wheel’s center hub hole and are also all scratched up and nasty looking, let alone the wrong finish altogether. NOT what I expected!
This photo shows how my thin walled socket will not fit on the lug nut due to the cap’s interference. It does not get a good grip on the lug at this angle. I would have to mash the socket down with a hammer or something, which would damage the caps and lugs.
In this next pic you can see how the cap overlaps the hollow area for the lugs.
In this photo, below, you can see the “hollows” the cap partially covers. The hub has the built-in “hollows” to allow access to the lug nut.
In these final two photos you will see the “solution” they sent to me. Note how they now expose part of the wheel’s center hub hole and are also all scratched up and nasty looking, let alone the wrong finish altogether. NOT what I expected!
