Both my wife’s Toyota 4Runner and my Ram 2500 have stupid wheel rims on them. All eight wheels just collect dirt, mud and snow when we take them off road, and that causes the wheels to be horribly out of balance. When we get back out on the highway after driving through dirt, mud or snow, both vehicles vibrate like a washing machine with all the clothes on one side of the drum. There have been times when I couldn’t go more than 60 miles an hour, for fear the truck was just going to bounce itself right off the road.
The problem is the way the rims are being built – and the fancier looking the rims are, the worse the problem seems to be. For the rims to look cool, apparently they have to have open space around the inside of the tire, and that area gets clogged up with dirt and debris.
In the old days, when nobody cared what their rims looked like, the rim was slanted on that inside diameter, so if any dirt, snow, mud or other crud got in there, it would just get slung off to the inside of the wheel, and the tire stayed in balance. The majority of people buying vehicles these days live in cities, and they never take their vehicles off of the paved roads, so there aren’t enough people complaining. That means the manufacturers are free to keep selling these awful dirt-gathering rims.
Sorry about the rant, but I’m tired of having to go to the car wash once a week simply to blast the dirt out of my wheel rims. If I find a set of rims that’s built right, I’ll let you know, so you can put them on your own off-road rig. Until then, I guess we’ll all just have to keep bouncing down the road with dirt-filled wheels.
