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Posted by Keith in Washington on Thursday, May 08, 2008 at 11:39:07 :
The topic below that I responded to on rims reminded me of an issue that I seem to be having on my F350 dually. It has 36K miles on it and it may have just cracked a second rim on the front axle.
The short of this message is to keep an eye on your alloy wheels on the front axle if you run with a constant heavy load.
I have the alloy rims on the front and on the outside tire of the dually. They are OEM rims. They but a steel rim on the inner dually. Last year I had a slow leak in one of the front tires. We found a nail in it and fixed it. A day later is was back down to 25 lbs from 60 lbs. Of course I was on a trip and it was Saturday. Les Schwab found a crack that was radiating from the valve stem hole towards the center of the rim. I took the rim to my Ford dealer when I got home and they replaced it immediately no questions.
I mentioned this to a couple of people in the trucking industry and they say that that is a common problem on the steering axle wheels of 18 wheelers. Apparently, the rims see a lot of flex when steering obviously due to the heavy load. However, they say the Alcoa rims do not do this. You get what you pay for.
The problem seems to be that I keep my camper on my F350 95+% of the time and weigh 12K. I run 4.5K on the front axle. I suspect that the rims were designed basically for the unloaded truck with occasional loads and show. I have noticed that basically all F450 and F550 truck have steel rims but they are mostly used for work trucks. So now lets see if Ford will take care of this even though I am 3 months past 36 months and 500 miles below 36K. Lets see if I can get them to budge on the 36 x 36 (36K miles x 36 months). I might have a chance since my service guy is really good and I also had a previous failure and it is a major safety issue.
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