BMW 5 spoke 17" wheels cracking

[busa_rush]

Chap at work has an '04 525 with 17" 5 spoke alloys and run flat tyres and he's just found that one of the wheels is cracked around the centre of the wheel, he only found out when the tyre fiter changed the tyre and saw the crack after being unable to inflate the tyre. Car has only done about 20 something k miles.

BMW are suggesting that this is an isolated incident and he must have hit a brick or a pot hole as they've never seen this before . . . BUT the chap from BMW assist who collected the car to deliver it to the dealer said "Oh, yes, we've seen a number of these, quite commn . . ."

Is this something other people have seen ? Has anybody managed to get BMW to pay for a new wheel ?

[Egbert Nobacon]

I believe there was a similar issue with some E46 3 series sport wheels -

Look on www.bmwland.co.uk or www.bmwcarclubgb.co.uk forums

[mc_blue]

Reminds me a bit of the Audi S3/RS4 soft wheels a few years ago.

[Alfa Dave]

I had this just recently on my E61 525d - I bought the car with £25k on the clock and after a few days the puncture alert came up. After resetting it would come on after a few weeks, this gradually increased in frequency so I got the tyre place to stick the offending wheel in a large water bath and found the inner rim had cracked.

My main dealer said that I should buy a replacement rim and when their official wheel warranty man had looked at the rim they would credit me if it was a fair waranty claim. He wasn't due at the dealer for 4 weeks.... After some "discussion" they fitted a new rim the next day at no cost to me.

I'm told (by another source) that this relates to the RFTs having very stiff sidewalls and this in turn can mean that when fitted by non experts the load on the rim can cause cracking.... don't know how true this is.

My wheels are 18" 124 style for the record.