As a few of you know I had issues with SSR cracked barrels and this time they were beyond repair. I googled around for a while and all the outfits that offered replacement barrels seemed to be very similar in terms of product offerings and pricing. The barrels I received had manufacturing stickers from American Rim Supply Inc so I assume most of these small retailers source their replacements from ARS and then sell to the consumer. I ended up ordering from [ www.threepiece.us ] because of the knowledgeable replies and decent online reviews. All the retailers quote the same 2-4 week turn around time 'because of polishing' and I ended up getting my barrels in 4 weeks. The originals came in .25" increments and the replacements are in .5" increments. The original outer lips I had were 1.75" and the inners were 6.75" originally. SSR wheels are welded together from the factory and instead of trying to butcher the wheel by cutting them apart I used this opportunity to upgrade from an 8.5" wheel to a 9" wheel and ordered 2" outers and 7" inner barrels which kept my offset the same and gave me a slightly wider wheel. This also allows be to run a bit more sidewall at 255/35R18 vs the 245/35R18 I was running before. After four weeks the wheels arrived - they were well packaged and the polished portions of the wheels looked great. They still had a decent amount of whatever polishing compound they use on them so I scrubbed them down and disassembled the old wheels for reassembly. I used the old hardware as the assembly bolts with the 12 star hex pattern are NLA. Reassembly was easy and used red loctite on assembly although the wheelpiece folks were recommending 24-28 ft lbs which was way too much for M6 bolts. After digging around 16 ft lbs is a better recommendation. I didn't end up getting a photo but the wheel assembly also requires that you seal the seam where the wheels meet. They sent along some grey metallic silicon which worked fine. I taped all the way around to give a nice solid edge. After curing I took to my local tire installer and have been happy with results.
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