Aftermarket wheels on Tow vehicles

Greene728 wrote:
In my area Craigslist is generally saturated with OEM wheels of basically every manufacturer.

This^ is where I'd look first. Bought my last couple sets of wheels off CL

kw/00 wrote:
I have aftermarket rims on my truck. They need to be rated the same or higher then the factory rims. Mine were rate higher then the original. I do believe there is a website out there that can sell you the original. I have seen in but can't recall the name, hopefully someone will chime in. Otherwise search out the aftermarket rims and make sure their rated load capacity is equal or higher then what you have now. A good tire shop can help you with this.

Depends on how picky you are ,but I had a heck of time finding a aftermarket wheel that matched the weight rating, and something I liked . It seemed the better I liked them the worse the weight rating was :) Finally found what I liked with the correct offset, correct weight rating, but was lug centric.

I agree on the tire shop ,although I did find the wheel I wanted by searching websites, but I bought from a local tire shop, they ordered the wheels.

gitane59 wrote:
I ruined an OEM polished 17x6.5 aluminium front wheel on my Ford F350 dually a couple month's ago and have been running the rusty steel spare and I am wanting to get it replaced.
It is next to impossible to find a used OEM wheel and new ones from Ford are around $800 US.
Aftermarket aluminium wheels in a matte black finish of the exact same size and spec's for this vehicle start at about $211 US a piece and go up from there depending on manufacturer.
Has anyone got any experience with or thoughts about using aftermarket wheels on a tow vehicle?

I went with aftermarket alloy wheel on my previous truck, biggest problem I had was finding a wheel that I liked, and had the same weight rating as the tire . In my case it was 3640# rating on the tire. The closest I found I liked was 3500 lb. rating on the wheel

This may have changed finding the correct weight rating, this was several years ago.

Another concern I had at the time is that about every aftermarket wheel I was looking at were lug centric as where OEM wheels are hub centric . I went with lug centric, and a wheel that had as said the 3500 lb. rating. Had no issues with the aftermarket wheels. And they looked a lot better then them old Superduty OEM wheels :)

IMO it would be a great time to get rid of those 17" wheels.

In my area Craigslist is generally saturated with OEM wheels of basically every manufacturer.

kw/00 wrote:
A good tire shop can help you with this.

My go-to tire shop is the root causal of the destroyed rim so I am not going back the and do not have a tire shop that I would trust at all right now with giving me correct information.
The incident happened while travelling and there was no safe space to carry the loose rim a couple thousand miles back home so I could not keep it. All 8 holes were terrible chewed out of elongated due to loosenss of the wheel nuts.

OEMs are forced. Aftermarket are cast. It took a LONG time for my aftermarket set to finally stress harden enough that I no longer have to worry about lug it's falling off. If I didn't over I would just powder coat a take off set of OEMs.

Check out the local junk / parts yard. And, go by some of the shops selling new truck wheels. Often, they'll take in factory wheels in partial trade from people they sell the fancy rims to. That's where I've gotten two replacement rims.

Bill

You could call Gaylen Fanns used auto parts in Manchester Tennessee. Their phone number is 931-728-4796. Last time I was there they had stacks and stacks of OEM take offs. They may or may not have what you need.

Thanks!

Jeremiah

I have aftermarket rims on my truck. They need to be rated the same or higher then the factory rims. Mine were rate higher then the original. I do believe there is a website out there that can sell you the original. I have seen in but can't recall the name, hopefully someone will chime in. Otherwise search out the aftermarket rims and make sure their rated load capacity is equal or higher then what you have now. A good tire shop can help you with this.

I've OEM wheels from a Les Schwab tire dealer. I imagine other tire stores have them too.
Might be worth a few calls!

Aftermarket wheels are often not nearly as high a quality or forged like the stock ones are.

BTW, how bad is it damaged? A wheel repair place can work miracles even on wheels with chunks broken off. They look good as new.
I have a new car that I'm having to learn the hard way to protect the wheels. I've had two of them repaired and they're perfect.