# Wheel question



## Capital AL (2 mo ago)

I was switching out my summer tires to winters and noticed there was a few mm gap between the wheel and the rotor hat. My aftermarket summer wheels were installed by a shop but when taking them off I noticed a ring (pictured below) near the hub. I am wondering if this is something I need to remove when installing the factory wheels. I also attached a few pictures showing what it looks like with the ring on and off as well as a picture showing a gap where I can fit a screwdriver behind the rim.


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## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

Yes, that ring is to help center wheels that have a larger center bore hole than the car's 64.1mm bore. Remove it when you remove your aftermarket wheels.


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## Capital AL (2 mo ago)

garsh said:


> Yes, that ring is to help center wheels that have a larger center bore hole than the car's 64.1mm bore. Remove it when you remove your aftermarket wheels.


Thanks, that was my thought but just wanted to confirm.


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## Mad Hungarian (May 20, 2016)

*STOP!!!

DO NOT under any circumstances REINSTALL THOSE WHEELS!!!*

From what I can see in those images either the centering rings provided with your wheels or the wheels themselves are NOT made to fit an M3P. The hubs on an M3P are virtually unique in the automotive world due to the fact the hub is "stepped". This is because the car's 64.1 mm diameter hubs were designed for the thicker one-piece cast rotors on the standard Model 3, which normally cover up that larger diameter portion of the hub, but my guess is when the decision was made at the last minute to add the thinner Performance Package 2-pce bimetallic rotors it was too late to change the hub design and the result is that the "step" now sits proud of the thinner performance rotor's hat surface.

Tesla's solution to make it work in production was to simply cut a 70.2 mm diameter, 3 mm deep relief into the back of all M3P OE wheels, however if you're not aware of this and you try installing regular Model 3 spec wheels on it the result will be exactly what you see in your top photo, the wheel's mounting pad will not fully engage with the rotor and the result is that there is a huge amount of axial stress being placed on the studs which almost certainly result in them failing at some point. You're actually very lucky you were even able to get the wheels off the car, most likely due to the fact those wrong centering rings acted as intermediary washers. I've seen several folks try to use hubcentric wheels with a straight 64.1 mm bore designed for regular Model 3s and once bolted down the 64.1 mm hub bore of the wheel tries to expand to mushroom over the 70.2 mm step and winds up welding itself in place. The fix can be as bad as having to saw or die grind the wheels into pieces to get them off the hub.

We issued a bulletin to all our of retailers back when the M3P came out to alert them to this, and programmed our application software to only ever allow wheels and centering rings with the required step to be sold for the M3P...











If the center bore on your wheels is at least 70.2 mm or larger then you should be able to fix this problem by getting a set of special stepped 70.2/64.1 mm made for the M3P.
However if the bore is less than 70.2 mm you'll need to get the wheels replaced with ones that fit correctly.


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## Capital AL (2 mo ago)

Mad Hungarian said:


> *STOP!!!
> 
> DO NOT under any circumstances REINSTALL THOSE WHEELS!!!*
> 
> ...


Thanks for the in depth explanation, that top picture is the stock OEM M3P wheels with the centering ring still on. Once I knew I had to remove the centering ring the wheels went on easily and were completely flush with the rotor hat.


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## Mad Hungarian (May 20, 2016)

Capital AL said:


> Thanks for the in depth explanation, that top picture is the stock OEM M3P wheels with the centering ring still on. Once I knew I had to remove the centering ring the wheels went on easily and were completely flush with the rotor hat.


Glad to hear that! I'd still like to see both sides of those rings though just to make sure they are the correct type, because they look like the centers are bulging out and I'm concerned they don't have the 70.2 mm relief area cut into the backside. It should look something like this...


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## Capital AL (2 mo ago)

Yup


Mad Hungarian said:


> Glad to hear that! I'd still like to see both sides of those rings though just to make sure they are the correct type, because they look like the centers are bulging out and I'm concerned they don't have the 70.2 mm relief area cut into the backside. It should look something like this...
> 
> View attachment 45644


Yup, looks just like that with the relief cut.


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## Mad Hungarian (May 20, 2016)

Capital AL said:


> Yup
> 
> Yup, looks just like that with the relief cut.


Excellent!

So uh...


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