its partly my fault, I should have looked them over better and probably passed on them. they were in boxes, and the guy ran tire balls so they were covered in gray grease/lube, and we were doing a lot of talking about racing. I asked him if there was anything he knew wrong and he said no they worked great but he got rid of his Polaris and only raced can am now. I tried to talk him down a hundred bucks but he was firm at 800. he also offered to sell me a set of lightly used GBC dirt commanders for $200 and I said yes I would take them.
I brought the wheels home and let them sit for a couple weeks. Knowing I should probably scrub the grease off before I mounted them up I may have kept putting it off. I painted the bead rings and started cleaning the wheels up (lots of washing and scrubbing and tried mounting up the tires the day before I had a race) I found a place on the dish where it looks like they were broken, and then welded and ground back down, but it looked like it had been fixed by a real shop and that they would work fine. after I got the rings all tightened down and called the guy I bought them from to find out what type of a fancy air tool I needed to fill these us with (its a screw on valve stem that you remove and replace with a cap so it doesn’t get broken, who knew?) and surprise! they were leaking air. mainly around the inner ring, where there’s a rubber gasket that goes between the hub face and the dish of the wheel. the gaskets were whooped, sort of falling apart and peeling out in sections. so I decided to get some silicone and try to make my own gasket on one, and ordered the real gaskets from k2. this last week I have probably put together and torn these wheels down 7 or 8 times. my homemade gasket job worked on the 2 wheels I tried it on, but the bolts used to pinch the ring and the tire bead seem to be too long and a few had poked through the backside of hub, causing air to leak through the threads and still giving me issues. I took one wheel and started to jb kwik weld the backs of all the caps where the bolts pop through if you tighten them too much. after I got one wheel done, my race buddy told me he knew a guy that welds aluminum and I decided the take the other 3 hub to nate (welder) and have him drop some puddles on the back sides of the where the bolts can poke through. I also picked up flat washers and lock washers to go on each bolt in an effort to keep thr bolt from popping through.
I was up til 1 am last night putting 2 wheels together, (my jb weld wheels and one of nates tig’ed wheels, and I need to do the others afterwork. then I will pray to god above that they hold air and dont leak anymore.
I’ve heard plenty of people that run k2’s without issue, and I think they are great wheels, but be aware of the fact that its easy to over tighten the ring bolts and damage the wheels, and that gaskets should be changed regularly. if anybody reads this and runs Keizer wheels or other beadlock please let me know what you torque your ring bolts to so I have a reference. everytime I ask someone or call the the company to ask I get told they just use a gun and they dont overtighten them. that doesn’t really help me out though. right now ive got the 2 finished wheels torqued to 12-13lbs and im hoping that works.
if all goes well I will snap some pics of them mounted on the quad and update this post with what I did.
