Wheel replacement question

All you need to do is go to an independent tire shop not this national tire business and all that stuff they give you all that safety crap and they can't do and they can't they can't they can't so go to a small place you know usually the Spanish guys run it they even have a tire balancing machine and all that you'd be surprised what you do is is you take a brown Scotch-Brite pad with you when you go to have your tires mounted and when the guy who mounts your tires goes to mount your tires show him the crud by pointing at it and show him the Scotch-Brite pad he'll check the wheel in the tire bouncing machine to make it spin and run the Scotch-Brite pad over the bead and seat this is the cruddy area that they're talking about It look shiny silver on the alloy wheels after one pass he'll do that to each one of the wheels that's supposedly has all this crud and that'll clean the crud down to silver aluminum instantaneously so there's no buying complete wheels so on and so forth especially if you have the aluminum alloy rims they just need to be cleaned as above and you're good to go another 300k Don't fall for it.

 

If what Tom suggested doesn't pan out, I'd try and get one OEM wheel (that matches the other three) from a wrecker's/dismantler's yard. Shouldn't cost too much.

 

They should also have some bead sealing goop available if the rim is truly in rough condition, even after giving it a bit of scouring with a Scotchbrite pad.

SM-G781V ?

 

I just look at what the tag says and where you live If you live where the tag says in your profile Man that's California I thought It doesn't rain in California weather is beautiful all the time in California so what are you doing driving through creeks to have this kind of stuff on your bead seats That's pretty good I guess or they've never been touched before and you've run tires down to the metal cords the whole life of the car which doesn't really pan out either usually spinning it with the brown Scott's bright pad that's the heavy cutting one not the green one or the blue one the brown one usually cleans all that right up quick fast in a hurry If you go to a real private tire store national chains have big long mission statements about safety and their concern for you and blah blah blah read it when you go in the door then when you go to the smaller place you won't see any of this gobbledygook nonsense on the wall what you will hear is you need not be in the shop because they don't want to be responsible for your laxidasical possible attitude in the shop and get hurt and then they're on the hook for it. The higher you get up in the franchise chain of commands and nonsense the longer the mission statements become and so on and so forth so there's always that Go to a real place that does real work in a real town like where you live. Somebody that hasn't paid somebody a fee to open a store and usually you'll wind up with more realistic things happening.

 

The OP location is IL.

 

Perfect that's the state where you might need to be cleaning your wheels every so often internally the bead seat and what have you because lots of nastiness on the roads there if I'm not mistaken

 

Gotta be plenty of oem wheels in the local salvage yards. If you really have one that is corroded beyond cleaning. My thoughts.

 

Yeah the 15s are plentiful the alloy 15 that's the bread and butter wheel for the Prius there are billions of them available many of them still sitting on cars in tow lots and junk yards just sitting. They can't give them away