Busted wheels.
 

The story is here. Supposedly these are Kinesis wheels but there are some who say they are HRE's but in any event there were a bunch of wheels that broke that way at a Viper club track day.

http://home.comcast.net/~deepeyes6/PLD08.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~deepeyes6/PLD09.jpg

Ouch!

yeah.. i posted the thread over at RF a few days ago. supposedly the wheels were weakened by the powder coating process, but thats still left to be seen why they really broke. however, kinesis is standing behind the product and doing their fair share of the investigation.

moral of the story is if you use your wheels hard, check them often. and i mean often.

supposedly 9 HRE street wheels broke at that one track day. rumors of PCA and IMSA were going to ban them from track events. lets leave that at rumors. I have not heard from RACE CONTROL or TECH STEWARDS at PCA or IMSA about any banning. this is still rumor and not to be passed along as fact. and unlike most of those people talking about this, i am in direct contact with the tech stewards and race control of these organizations...

in the pro race world, my race shop checks wheels after EVERY use. each car has 10-15 sets of identical rims which they cycle through the race season. wheels are given a chemical penetration and UV light test at each inspection. Guess what? even if the wheel passed its inspection with flying colors, I still have pics of wheels that broke just like those in this thread...

You have to pay to play in this game...

Now that's some serious torque :wow:

Holy cow. It makes you wonder if the design was structurally well designed to begin with? Yikes.

Speaking of which, why would someone put such expensive wheels on a car for track use? Weight? Those things will get beat to hell on the track.

thats the thing.. HRE marketing says they are race proven, track inspired, strong, forged, light, etc etc etc etc.... all the things that make track oriented people's eyes open up really big...

the high end race only wheels are just as expensive or even more.

in the end, if you track, you put a helluva lot more stress on any rim then a street only rim and you need to check them often.. thats all.. its considered a wear item in pro racing...