3-spoke Jimny 3 wheels - usage experience

What is the general usage experience with 3-spoke Jimny 3 alloy wheels like the one in the attached picture?

These wheels were a popular factory option with early Jimnys 3 (I believe 1998-2005), but the factory ceased offering them past the year cca 2006.

I remember reading somewhere a long time ago that these wheels have a higher tendency of becoming warped and then causing the notorious death wobble. I don't know how much true it is.

I am being offered a set of five of these sexy wheels from a dismantled Jimny which has been beaten off the road quite a bit, so I am worried if they might be warped.

 

You need to place each wheel onto a Jimny hub and spin it. A decent factory wheel should not be more than 1mm out of true.

Roger

You have a larger un-supported area than the 5 spoke (sometimes referred to 10 spoke as each spoke has a gap in the middle), so logic dictates that they might be more susceptible to distortion.

That been said, if you get a nice clean set, they should be strong enough, unless you are going to do heavy (off-road) work.

Sadly nowadays, it seems it is a pot hole on the road which recks wheels and a severe one will dent the rim on either wheel type.

I guess its possible for these to be more susceptible to damage, as Dr Robin said mainly due to the larger unsupported area. The rim can be distorted or flattened in this area given a hard enough bash.

The roads are awful even before you get offroad, my motorbike (three spoke) and ex Polo (3 spoke) have both suffered at the hands of the UK roads, both with rim damage.

Having said that both have been inspected and repaired by suitable wheel places for no much money, so a slight distortion is not too big an issue.

They look good, nice period wheel and something different now....

My general theoretical thoughts are the same as of DrRobin. That is why I asked for some practical experience.
I do not do heavy off road driving, but drive lots on rough gravel roads with tyre pressure decreased to around 1,0-1,1 bar.


The current wheels on my car are as in the attached picture (5-spoke).
They were a stock standard factory option on Jimnys from cca 2005 to cca 2012.

All five of these 5-spoke wheels were more or less distorted back in the day when I bought my Jimny second hand, and they produced the dreaded death wobble, which I could not sort out by any other measure until a specialist identified that the wheels were distorted and I then had the wheels (somehow) repaired.

A specialist wheel repair shop took all five wheels into some booth into which they did not allow me to enter, and after about half an hour and lots of various noises coming from the booth, they came back and then proceeded to mount the tyres on the wheels and balance them. I have not had death wobble ever again. The cost to repair all five of those wheels was about a third to half of the price of their second hand market value. I did not notice any visual difference on the wheels after the repair was performed.

I am still to this day very curious to find out how they actually perform such repairs, as those specialists did not want to reveal anything.



Anyway, is there anyone who has had death wobble issues caused by those 3-spoke alloy wheels and did they manage to repair the distortions in the wheels?