GM Issues Technical Service Bulletin For Corvette C8 Wheels
Hold your horses, it's not a recall
By Matthew Crisara on Mar 30, 2021
That's right, GM is under fire again for quality-control issues related to the wheels on its Corvette models. While C7 Z06 and still having nightmares about their wheels cracking under normal driving conditions, the current issue is referring to exposed wheel porosity; this is just cute industry-speak for saying that some Corvette wheels have holes in them following the casting process, with only ten percent of them being impacted.
We'd be remiss not to mention that this simply means that the wheels don't meet GM's internal requirements. At present, the technical service bulletin covers approximately 13,049 vehicles with only ten-percent of them being impacted.
It's still early days, but the TSB essentially says that when the affected vehicles come into a dealership for scheduled maintenance, that technicians will be required to inspect all four wheels, and replace them if necessary. Currently, the Open Spoke and Trident wheel designs are the only examples included in the bulletin – both can be replaced at no additional cost, unlike the issues that C7 owners experienced.
While the current situation for Corvette is rapidly evolving, it comes in stark contrast with previous wheels that the American automaker had released that are still popular to this day. Most notably are the salad shooters from the C4 Corvette, which didn't suffer from reliability issues and are still hot stuff to this day – even non-Vette owners are champing at the bit to get a set for their car.
Digression aside, GM says that any wheels with the porosity issue will be removed and have a 13mm hole drilled through the barrel of the rim to prevent reuse. After the continuous struggle, we wouldn't be surprised to see the next Corvette come from the factory with forged wheels after this many bad eggs left the assembly line.
Source: Chevrolet via Corvette Blogger