Jimbo
Im not saying that the sole reason for the wheel to fail is due to the road, suspension and a battering. Im saying its a contributing factor. There is clearly a series of events that have led to these wheels failing all of which have contributed to slowly weakening the wheel over time thus resulting in an unfortunate failure.

It will be interesting to see what fiat come back with.

A small tash about 3cm long to go directly under your nose maybe??

A little more news from an admin on the French forum.

They have seen a few 20VT Plus wheels with cracked spokes but none on standard 20VT wheels.

I'm thinking Clarkson and a coupe in green. That wheel was well out of balance and under some serious stress and it failed in exactly the same point.
The weapon was bolted to the end of the spokes iirc yet the wheel failed in exactly the same place as all of these. My first coupe had a single cracked spoke on the front right and that was 60k non refurbished.

I think we need to pool some info from the owners of failures to see if we have a trend:
power, suspension set up, did the brakes bind at all, was the front wheel bearing failing causing excess heat, track day use and anything else that might give a clue. Most fails have been on cars owned for a few years so we should beable to get some good history?

If I remember correctly the drilled holes in the spokes, which could easily weaken them. Probably discount that evidence.

The breakage of the TG Coupe wheel was caused by weakened spokes (hole drilled through them) and the fact that the bloody great spike dug into the Lexus400 and bounced the Coupe into the air

Also the coupe was being driven by an idiot

I wonder how long alloy wheels have been used as standard spec on production cars?

As mentioned in the link at begining of thread a specific temperature/time is used to give the metal its strengh. Therefore does any time at this temp or above have an affect?

Individual life time physical abuse to wheel (uk roads)?

Seems to be a life time issue as is possible in the bmw/audi issue.

Given the age of our cars cannot see how fiat could be considered in any way responsible says alot for customer service that they are even interested

Any one got any decent wheels for sale

I've got a full set of LE wheels in the garage, although unused for 4 years I'm still going to check them for cracking.

The front wheel of my plus fell off and caused £lots

My point was that it failed at the same point as this one even though it was drilled at the rim end of the spokes.
So far all ive read lots of guesses and no evidence gathering.
Anyone on here can laterally load a wheel to see what force it takes to bust a spoke?

All a bit pointless unless its attached to a car Marco, you need the load of the car through the centre of the wheel....unless you're chucking the whole car off the racking?

Wouldn't put it past him.....

Give him a break Jimbo, that's pure science for Italians

It would explain the decline of the Roman Empire though.

Yeah but no matter what methods they chose they always make it look good.

Any gibbon can do that...

All right, all right, I'll get my coat!

That deserves capital punishment

Back on topic, a perfunctory search doesn't reveal a serial outbreak of failing wheels but perhaps these instances are pointing towards a "shelf life" for the coupe's particular design. I feel reassured that mine were changed to a different make a few years ago.

Sorry Simon: Any Gibbon can do that...

But I didn't want to make it *too* obvious!

I was in Hubby's part of the world over the weekend and the state of the roads are (still) terrible, even the main roads. Even in a Stilo with large sidewall tyres and soft suspension.

It can't be a coincidence that most of my car repairs over the last 5 years or so are suspension related - I don't remember changing suspension arms 20 years ago, just very occasionally worn out dampers.

So I suppose my point is that the shock of hitting road 'imperfections' (Fife's speciality is sunken manholes) and potholes is going through the wheel to get to the suspension which must eventually add to failure at any weak points?

I agree
10 years of constant abuse is eventually going weaken a wheel no matter how strong it is

FWIW, I cracked three of my Team Dynamics ProRace 1 - all were hairline cracks on the inside rim (where the wheel flexes the most)

Team Dynamics were 99% confident that these cracks were caused by prolonged driving on poor road surfaces (the inside of the wheel flexes when it hits bumps - the outside doesn't, as it's supported by the spokes)

Different failure, I know, but it illustrates the point that even high quality wheels can fail with a repeated beating

I warned the members of the dutch forum aswell

TimR is spot on, the roads in Fife are really bad