Wheel Corrosion Problem

October 16, 2011

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed a tire was low. Checked it out and the back bead was leaking. Took it to the Firestone shop and they demounted it, cleaned it and put some sealer on it and said that it will probably happen again because of the continued corrosion. Problem fixed - for a couple of weeks. Last weekend, I noticed the same tire was low. Checked, and again, the back bead is leaking.

There are a couple of wheels that have the chrome pealing off around the valve stems. It looks tacky and eventually will be a problem for the valve stem. I can't be continually fighting leaking wheels/tires. The truck sits in the airport parking lot too much waiting for me to arrive at 10 or 11 PM at night. I'm not going to start changing tires in those circumstances.

So this weekend I bought new 2011 takes offs. Wheels and tires off a new 2011 truck that was being upgraded. They weren't cheap, but considering that new tires are about $800 alone, it means I got the new wheels actually pretty cheap.

I guess I need to spend more time cleaning the wheels, although I can't clean the inside and that's where the corrosion is causing the leaks.

The old wheels

New wheels. Hope they hold up better.

Corrosion on the back side of the original wheels.

Chrome flaking off around the valve stem on the original wheels.

I considered getting just plain steel wheels from the scrap yard, painting them and going with those. It turns out they are pretty rare - the only 18" steel wheels Ford made were for the spare tire. So only the trucks with the optional 18" alloy wheels had one 18" steel wheel. So there has to be 4 wrecked F150s with 18" alloy wheels to get a collection of 4 steels wheels. So, they are $100 a piece from the junk yard. I basically got these new allow wheels for $100 a piece and didn't have to paint them.

I actually like the appearance of the plain steel wheel. But if I put these all around on the truck, it would seriously decrease the resale value of the truck.

So between what it would have cost to get 4 used steel wheels and the impact on the resale of the truck, I decided to go with the new take offs.

See the continuation of the story here.