Can you buy replica wheels?

The most common problem, which crops up even with good-quality replica wheels, is their paint finish, or rather its quality. In summer and on decent roads such wheels still feel perfectly fine, but once the first de-icing chemicals of winter hit the roads, these wheels can simply peel, losing their looks completely. Restoring their appearance, together with what you already paid for the replica wheels, can end up costing the buyer a sum comparable to buying genuine standard wheels, even second-hand ones.

What’s more, despite looking just like standard wheels, and like other similar replica wheels, if you lose one wheel (and given the unknown quality of these wheels, the chance of one breaking, even on a not particularly bad pothole, is many times higher than with branded products), finding an exact match in colour and (pay attention!) weight can turn into an unsolvable problem.

In fact, even just buying four such wheels of matching weight can turn out to be a genuinely difficult task, even if all four come from the same manufacturer and the same batch. Hardly anyone knows this, because after buying them it would hardly occur to anyone to weigh the wheels and compare them. And that is a real shame, because a significant difference in weight between wheels on the same axle creates an uneven (non-standard) load on the suspension, which shortens its service life and makes driving in extreme conditions extremely dangerous.

Problems also turn up with the geometry of such wheels, but these can usually be spotted right after buying them at a decent tyre fitter, and sorted out by returning or exchanging the wheel.

Problems with the manufacturing process and the quality of the alloy, on the other hand, are something you will have no way of spotting right after buying them: they will make themselves known once the wheels are in use. Often, during the next seasonal tyre change, it turns out that the geometry of such a wheel has gone and repairing it simply is not worthwhile.

So the answer to the question “can you buy replica wheels?” is a personal one; I myself think the answer is no, you should never buy such wheels under any circumstances, because they are a kind of counterfeit and nobody takes any responsibility for your safety if you buy them. If you have nonetheless decided to buy such wheels, at the very least try to do the following:

1. Only buy replica wheels if the seller is prepared to give you a written warranty, for at least six months, and make sure the warranty covers not just changes in the wheel’s geometry but also the state of the paint finish.
2. Straight after buying them, take the wheels to a professional tyre fitter with the right quality equipment, and ask for the wheels to be checked in full for geometry and consistency. Only once the full check is done (weighing included) can you fit tyres to these wheels and see how they balance.