club.liberty.asn.au

There has been many many discussions across many many forums, most of them resulting in people being banned, threads being locked or even deleted. But from what I understand, the photo Shane has linked, was taken from 4-5years ago from a bad batch of rims, and did only affected a limited number of sets. ROTA has since replaced those bad rims and improved their quality as far as I know.

There have also been recent reports that their rims have failed on rally cars/tarmac rally cars. In particular, EVO's and GTR's, and as you can imagine a car like a 1.8tonne GTR + slicks = a hell of a lot of force. Yes, it's true they're not as good as the JDM counter parts such as RAYS, but they are by no means unsafe for daily driven cars. Some US guys even use them as track rims (although I wouldn't) I'd say a large majority of people would be hard pressed to subject these rims to loads till the point that they break. And unless I'm mislead, they are JWI, VIA approved. Which (I hope), means they are reasonably safe.

JWI = self accredited by manufactureres to meet requirements
VIA = 3rd party testing
(or other way around, forgot)

I think ROTA has copped a bad reputation from people loosely posting those images everywhere without knowing the full details of what happened or just spinning the story to make it worse than it is. I remember hearing people posting images with those ridiculous captions on photos of a set of rims that broke from hitting a kerb at considerable speed. Any rim will break if you subject them to such forces RAYS or ROTA's.

ROTA has done pretty well to deal with the bad publicity and their after sales service is second to none. It's probably safe to say that they're perfectly fine to run on a daily driven car, I'd still be a bit iffy on using them as track rims.

That's my take on it all anyways.

I chose ROTA purely because I was unable to get the style of rim I wanted in the size/offset I was after. (stupid 5x100)
If mine break, I'll be sure to post photos up here with a full story.

jdm rsk wrote:

Funny when you consider the tyres you were happy to use on your car

drndrn wrote:
JWI = self accredited by manufactureres to meet requirements
VIA = 3rd party testing
(or other way around, forgot)

.

That’s the issue with Rota, it’s not JWI its JIL, that can't even copy that right. JWI is a marking which has started to appears on alot of replica wheels.
JIL is stamped on wheels only made in Japan by manufactures which meet the highest standards

I have even seen Rota wheels with TUV markings.......

Just went outside for a look. My markings are "JIL" or whatever it is. Exactly the same on as the markings seen here. http://honda-tech.com/showthread.php?t=2117420

Are those the right ones?

Are u saying rota put these markings on even if they don't meet the standard. I'd assume they'd cop some flack for doing so..

I think you'll find that Rota is producing a significantly better product than they were 5+ years ago!

You'll also find that they are currently producing factory Toyota alloys for their Phillipine market as well, and I daresay that Toyota is not a company willing to risk having substandard quality wheels on their vehicles.

I like it how every wheel except Rota's are invincible...

drndrn wrote:
I think ROTA has copped a bad reputation from people loosely posting those images everywhere without knowing the full details of what happened or just spinning the story to make it worse than it is. I remember hearing people posting images with those ridiculous captions on photos of a set of rims that broke from hitting a kerb at considerable speed. Any rim will break if you subject them to such forces RAYS or ROTA's.

When I was going to buy wheels I also did a lot of reading and found the same thing. It was actually one specific design of Rota wheel which had the problem and they since revised and replaced all suspect wheels.

I would still be happy to buy Rota wheels for road use, but I would also keep my OEM wheels for track use. Tyres cheaper for 17" so it works out well.

Not sure if Shane's main point of this post was to say don't buy cheap wheels.

Hey, ROTA's alright. I would say they are middle of the range, not necessarily bottom or top of the range. We had ROTA's on our Aurion for over 2 years without any issues.

But you have to be pushing it pretty darn hard at the track or curbed it really badly to make it break like that. I can't imagine any wheels, no matter how cheap they are, breaking like that during everyday use.

Arith wrote:Not sure if Shane's main point of this post was to say don't buy cheap wheels.

Who knows what his point was he didn't type anything at all

Here is a simple test I did, type the following into google images and view the results: broken work wheel. Repeat with: broken rota wheel.

Draw your own conclusions.

Hahah... How many peeps rolling on Work wheels Shane? Compared to the billions of peeps running Rota's...

Fair dinkum, you're pretty naive if you think that a company that's been around for 34 years(since 1976) and produces 50,000 wheels per month is selling a sub-standard product.

First hand, I'll happily admit that the Rota's that I had on my car for a couple of weeks while the Ultraleggera's were being powdercoated ran smoother with no wheel wobble AT ALL compared to my $3000 Italian made "Good quality" wheels, which still have a bit of wheel wobble at 100-110km/h...

I would have absolutely no issues putting a set of Rota's on my car permanently!

Jimmy S wrote:Hahah... How many peeps rolling on Work wheels Shane? Compared to the billions of peeps running Rota's...

Fair dinkum, you're pretty naive if you think that a company that's been around for 34 years(since 1976) and produces 50,000 wheels per month is selling a sub-standard product.

First hand, I'll happily admit that the Rota's that I had on my car for a couple of weeks while the Ultraleggera's were being powdercoated ran smoother with no wheel wobble AT ALL compared to my $3000 Italian made "Good quality" wheels, which still have a bit of wheel wobble at 100-110km/h...

I would have absolutely no issues putting a set of Rota's on my car permanently!

didnt take long to get a nibble

Hahah... Stirrer... Just standing up for what I believe to be a good product that cops a lot of perhaps unwarranted criticism.

Jimmy S wrote:How many peeps rolling on Work wheels Shane?

me

i too think that rota shouldnt be canned just cos a bad batch of wheels. their quality control should be better, which im sure it is now, but they do offer better design (and better offset) than most of the 'budget' wheel manufacturers out there