Damage to alloy wheels?

[nsgnomad]

Has anyone damaged an alloy wheel in their travels? If so, what were the circumstances and location?
I am considering changing the wheels on my vehicle for my lap next year. Steel vs alloy? I will be doing mostly black-top, but am also hoping to do the Gibb River Road, and no doubt there will also be a few much shorter gravel roads to various locations of interest. No serious off road work.
Your experiences and thoughts please.

[loub]

I have alloy wheels and like you stated most is blacktop travel so it's advantages are cooler running and weight.I have never had an issue but have never driven thousand of ks on corragted roads towing.

[GerryP]

Have had alloys on both vans and vehicles for years and have never had any issues. We have travelled most of the remote tracks including the Canning, OTT, Simpson several times, Madigan line etc. We've towed vans through some pretty rough places as well.
We've suffered plenty of flat tyres over the years, but have never damaged a rim.

[Frank and Brenda]

Alloys on the car and steel rims on the van here but as Gerry says a few flat tyres but no damaged rims
We haven't done any real rough stuff but we've taken the van where an on roaster shouldn't go and the roughest we've done in the car is hing into the bungle bungles

[Old Techo]

The Prado comes standard with 17" alloy wheels.

Ours was new in 2007 so now 16 years old and done 155k of which 90%+ was towing as not used at home.

Many alloy wheels are damaged by careless drivers rubbing kerbs when parking.  I have none of those marks but some signs of age where the thick clear coating has lifted in some places.

I began my association with alloy wheels when I bought wide USA Mags for my GTHO around 1971.

The only time I hate alloys is when I have to remove a tyre, especially big ones like the Prado. I have some rim plastic protectors I made from split 30mm plastic water pipe that I use as a buffer between the rim and the tyre lever.

[gerrym]

Alloy rims and only one flat that the tyre guy said a tube wouldn't fix. I begged to differ.

A few scratches where I dropped off the edge of the bitumen.

[jr]

Hi Roger,
I think it is fair to say that if you damage an aluminium rim that’s it, but a steel rim can be repaired on the side of the road.

I personally have used both and have had a couple of aluminium rim failures once when the wheel came off and one due to a casting fault but never due to bad roads.

Aluminium is lighter but not by much my first set was 5Kgs lighter and my second set 1Kg lighter, thats using 17” x 8” rims.

If you have 13- or 14-inch rims there is a chance that the alloy could get damaged but once you go up to 16 or 17” rims with high profile tyres 70% or greater there is a lot of rubber between the road and the rim and the chance of damage is very low.

I personally would take my van anywhere with my 17” aluminium rims.


JR