[tsk1979]

Originally Posted by tamojoym

I am on speed rim unfortunately .I have already contacted customer care and no option of Inspection given or was asked to have the wheel inspected .Anyway what inspection would the service center guys do with their naked eyes as someone pointed out the alloys can only be inspected via X-rays . Actually contemplating changing the alloys to after market known ones -maybe over reacting .

My car has run nearly a year on this alloys .

You are not in a coastal area, so stress corrosion issue(possibly the one of the likely candidates) won't be a problem at your end. So you can keep using them for now.

[tamojoym]

Originally Posted by SDP

What did the customer care reply?

May be as Dry Ice suggested, write to the dealer with customer care in loop and ask for full refund on the alloys.

Customer care forwarded the mail to Customer Care Manager Bangalore -who in turn called to re assure me that nothing would happen to the alloys and they are strong enough and that they are investigating the cause of the failure pointed out in this thread .

Originally Posted by tsk1979

You are not in a coastal area, so stress corrosion issue(possibly the one of the likely candidates) won't be a problem at your end. So you can keep using them for now.

Well I am using them for now-with a prayer on my lips .

[SDP]

Originally Posted by skotha

....I had a discussion with the dealer and they mentioned they have not received any complaints on this and that they sell these alloys by the dozens every day.....

Sell by the dozens? Wow! I can only laugh at such a claim by the dealer.
Here's a data point: M&M sells around 3000 XUVs in a month. That's 100 per day. 100 per day across all of India. And this particular dealer in one particular city sells alloys by dozens?

[Sankar]

Originally Posted by tamojoym

I am on speed rim unfortunately .I have already contacted customer care and no option of Inspection given or was asked to have the wheel inspected .Anyway what inspection would the service center guys do with their naked eyes as someone pointed out the alloys can only be inspected via X-rays . Actually contemplating changing the alloys to after market known ones -maybe over reacting .

My car has run nearly a year on this alloys .

If i were you i would take off these wheels and go to steel rims when the news of this came out.
or
If i couldn't replace it outright I would keep using it but wouldn't be doing highway speeds on these wheels. I would also limit the cornering speed to limit the lateral loading of the spokes.

Originally Posted by SDP

Sell by the dozens? Wow! I can only laugh at such a claim by the dealer.
Here's a data point: M&M sells around 3000 XUVs in a month. That's 100 per day. 100 per day across all of India. And this particular dealer in one particular city sells alloys by dozens?

Probably people buying replacements for their broken alloys. Sorry couldn't resist!

[nitinralli]

Originally Posted by tamojoym

Well I am using them for now-with a prayer on my lips .

I would suggest you get these alloys exchanged with after market alloys. Tried and tested alloys are Prestige Alloys. I have been using them since 2011 and they have run 56K kms till date with no issues. Not to forget my daily office drive includes rough village roads so they had a pretty decent abuse all these 3+ years and they are still going strong (touch-wood).

[tamojoym]

Can anybody help me as to what offset or ET does the OEM alloys for XUV have

[tamojoym]

Originally Posted by rahul_kej

Visited the service centre today. They had an external look at all 4 wheels and clicked pictures of each wheel. As expected nothing could be made out with an external inspection.
They re torqued all the wheel nuts with help of a adjustable torque wrench to the specified number.
They will be creating a report along with the pictures and forward it to the company. I think next I will be receving a call from the company for what can be done by them.

Rahul_kej -did you hear back from Mahindra on this .

[Sankar]

Originally Posted by tamojoym

Can anybody help me as to what offset or ET does the OEM alloys for XUV have

Refer the picture in the link below. Offset is marked as ET on the wheel, in the picture below ET is 52.

http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/attach...s-dsc_0646.jpg

[rahul_kej]

Originally Posted by tamojoym

Rahul_kej -did you hear back from Mahindra on this .

No mail or any call after the inspection. Thankfully I have no plan of any road trip soon.

[satya180]

Originally Posted by SDP

Satya, you associated with either Neo Wheels or M&M in some way? Was wondering how you know these details. We have been trying to figure out the OEM for these wheels right from the day the thread started.

No,
Im not associated with any of them.
All I can say is, I am related to the aluminium foundry business.
They make the accessory XUV wheel, not the OEM pattern.

[skotha]

Any further updated on this topic? Did you guys hear back anything from Mahindra or the wheel manufacturer?

Did a long road trip over the weekend with the original steel rims (non-alloys) that I changed back to. Went through some really horrible roads but had absolutely no issues.

-Shiva

[SDP]

This is panning out precisely how I anticipated.

An unexpected incident happens (an alloy breaks without any obvious impact to the wheel). The incident goes viral on internet and suddenly lot of people are talking about poor QA by the manufacturer, poor design by the vendor and potential threat to their life etc. The car manufacturer promptly refunds the money (through the dealer) for all 4 alloys to the impacted customer, thereby ensuring that the transaction with the impacted party is closed for all practical purposes and they don't have to answer any uncomfortable questions going forward.

The story and the broken alloy photos are shared on FaceBook and twitter by various people. As the information reaches more people, a few more customers with those alloys create noise. Some call up dealerships, some shout at customer-care and a few more write to customer-care top-executives and tweet the story to other big-shots in the company. The ones who call are assured that this particular incident must have happened due to a impact to the alloy and they should not worry as there is nothing wrong with the alloys. The ones who show a lot of concern on e-mails (thereby creating a written trail, if something happens) are given a 'comfort blanket' - "click snaps of the alloys and sent them to us", "bring in your vehicle, we will inspect your alloys", "that one off incident is being investigated, but your alloys are fine" etc etc. Customers are engaged so that they feel that they are being heard and they are being taken cared of. Open-ended emails are sent which reassure the customers that "safety of our customers is our top-most priority".

Let 2 weeks go by. The decibel levels come down drastically in 2 weeks. The tweeterati with an attention span of a goldfish would have already dropped the story a few hours later. The online portals would move on to the next "breaking news" in a few days. After everybody has ran out of something new to comment, the FB post would go down way low on the group page for anybody to remember. Life would go on.

The investigation report would come and would get a brief mention in one of the high level meetings at the manufacturer's headquarters. Then it would be filed away in some 'internal' file and that's where it would stay accumulating dust, till the next incident happens (if at all).

[mpksuhas]

Originally Posted by SDP

This is panning out precisely how I anticipated.

Exactly. I hope atleast they put their findings in to future designs.

Remember another thread which ended up without any conclusion.

[man_of_steel]

Originally Posted by mpksuhas

Remember another thread which ended up without any conclusion.

I would say that it is near impossible for us to arrive at a concrete conclusion in cases like these. We can only speculate or try to identify the likely causes till the company steps in, collects samples and data from all over its market, analyze it and accept that there is a defect with the alloys and probably issue a recall! The same was the case with the 390 Duke's alloy wheels. All of us two wheeled terrorists tried to dig deep into the problem and speculated quite a few probable causes, but that discussions too reached no conclusion.

But the noteworthy thing in the 390's case was that KTM has almost accepted that there was some mysterious problem with the 390's alloys and strengthen it by making the alloy (a.k.a unsprung mass) heavier.

[Seran Manian]

I was scared out of my wits to see the picture of broken alloys in the posts made by SDP and GTO. The respective owners should feel that they were lucky not to have ended up in a major accident due to that.

I read some articles to compare the regular mild steel rims and alloys and found that rims only dent and generally do not crack like alloys. I feel that having rims is a safe bet.

Do alloys give any technical advantage over the regular MS ones?