Curlyp
Senior Member
I’ve been busy over the past week with adding a few new things to the truck.
The first thing I added last weekend was the 42” 560 watt light bar to the front bumper. I really like the look of it and it turned out well! I ran into a few issues with getting the bumper bolts loosened, but after some elbow grease, it finally broke free. I bought a heavy duty 12 gauge 600 watt LED wiring harness with a 60 amp relay. I went over to my local bodyshop and the owner drilled the hole through the plastic piece in my firewall and inserted a rubber grommet for free! The wiring was quick and simple; I am still working on my solution for a switch panel as I am not going to cut into the truck console.
Then Friday, I finally had my wheels and tires mounted, balanced, and installed! I am loving the aggressive look, she definitely looks meaner! haha. The wheels I purchased were the 20x9 (0mm offset) Cali Off-Road Obnoxious black satin with milled spokes and the tires are 35x12.50r20. There is a long story behind the wheels so I will try to make it quick, but I got them for a KILLER deal!
I was looking online and found a wheel shop in PA (I am not going to name the company to be fair) that was selling all different makes/sizes of wheels. The wheels were listed for $939. I contacted the company to see if they were able to come down on the price some. The sales rep got back to me and told me he has the same set for $800, but the wheels had tires mounted on them and the customer didn’t like the offset, so he could discount them. I asked if there were any scratches, marks, etc, and he told me no. He even emailed me some pictures.
I went ahead and purchased them. The rep actually gave me an additional $20 off making it $780, plus $60 shipping for a total of $840. UPS came and delivered the wheels on 7/27. I opened the box of the first one and my jaw dropped. I opened the second one, then the third one, and lastly the fourth one. By then, I was heated and had to keep calm! What do you know….there were scratches and swirl marks all over the wheels. One of them even had a deep gouge.
While staying calm, I drafted an email back to the rep and included 29 pictures circling everything that was wrong. The next morning I received the response, “If you are unhappy with the wheels I will have the wheels returned to me and refund your money.” As you can image I was SOO pissed. I wrote him a nasty email and directly contacted corporate headquarters. I spoke with a woman in charge of customer complaints and she asked me to forward her the emails and pictures along with what type of resolution I wanted. I told her I would like one of two things; a minimum of $100 refund plus $60 shipped refunded or a new set of wheels. She looked at everything, contacted me back two days later and said you will be receiving the partial refund.
This brought the cost of the wheels from $780 to $620. The more I thought about it and talked with a few folks, they were saying it was still too much. I contacted the woman back at corporate and told her I needed at least another $100 refund or a brand new set of wheels. She told me no. I told her I want to speak with someone higher than you. Within a couple hours, I received a call from the District VP and he asked me what was going on. I told him the whole situation, how the rep lied to me and that I have it all in writing, and that based on the condition of the wheels I would need another $100 refund to help get it somewhat fixed, or a new set of wheels. He asked me to email him everything so he could review it. About an hour later he called me back to apologize about my experience and that this should never have happened. He agreed to refund me an additional $100, making the total I paid for the wheels $520.
Now, when you see the pictures of these you are going to be like on WOW that is bad. However, I contacted the owner of JaxWax and he hooked up with some product and lended me his buffer to buff and polish the wheels. When you see the end results you are going to be shocked. The wheels look almost perfect now. All the swirl marks came out and almost every scratch is completely gone. Plus, there is a nice shine to them! For a total of $550 plus my time of buffing/polishing them, I think they were worth it!
Here is a video of me buffing/polishing and below that are some pictures of the light bar and wheels. FYI, I am not a pro at buffing/polishing; I have never used a dual action buffer until the other day for the fist time! The video is 20 minutes long, however, I wanted to capture some live buffing/polishing to show the before and after results.
https://youtu.be/Vc9YLFIU18o
Here are the wheel pics:
The first thing I added last weekend was the 42” 560 watt light bar to the front bumper. I really like the look of it and it turned out well! I ran into a few issues with getting the bumper bolts loosened, but after some elbow grease, it finally broke free. I bought a heavy duty 12 gauge 600 watt LED wiring harness with a 60 amp relay. I went over to my local bodyshop and the owner drilled the hole through the plastic piece in my firewall and inserted a rubber grommet for free! The wiring was quick and simple; I am still working on my solution for a switch panel as I am not going to cut into the truck console.
Then Friday, I finally had my wheels and tires mounted, balanced, and installed! I am loving the aggressive look, she definitely looks meaner! haha. The wheels I purchased were the 20x9 (0mm offset) Cali Off-Road Obnoxious black satin with milled spokes and the tires are 35x12.50r20. There is a long story behind the wheels so I will try to make it quick, but I got them for a KILLER deal!
I was looking online and found a wheel shop in PA (I am not going to name the company to be fair) that was selling all different makes/sizes of wheels. The wheels were listed for $939. I contacted the company to see if they were able to come down on the price some. The sales rep got back to me and told me he has the same set for $800, but the wheels had tires mounted on them and the customer didn’t like the offset, so he could discount them. I asked if there were any scratches, marks, etc, and he told me no. He even emailed me some pictures.
I went ahead and purchased them. The rep actually gave me an additional $20 off making it $780, plus $60 shipping for a total of $840. UPS came and delivered the wheels on 7/27. I opened the box of the first one and my jaw dropped. I opened the second one, then the third one, and lastly the fourth one. By then, I was heated and had to keep calm! What do you know….there were scratches and swirl marks all over the wheels. One of them even had a deep gouge.
While staying calm, I drafted an email back to the rep and included 29 pictures circling everything that was wrong. The next morning I received the response, “If you are unhappy with the wheels I will have the wheels returned to me and refund your money.” As you can image I was SOO pissed. I wrote him a nasty email and directly contacted corporate headquarters. I spoke with a woman in charge of customer complaints and she asked me to forward her the emails and pictures along with what type of resolution I wanted. I told her I would like one of two things; a minimum of $100 refund plus $60 shipped refunded or a new set of wheels. She looked at everything, contacted me back two days later and said you will be receiving the partial refund.
This brought the cost of the wheels from $780 to $620. The more I thought about it and talked with a few folks, they were saying it was still too much. I contacted the woman back at corporate and told her I needed at least another $100 refund or a brand new set of wheels. She told me no. I told her I want to speak with someone higher than you. Within a couple hours, I received a call from the District VP and he asked me what was going on. I told him the whole situation, how the rep lied to me and that I have it all in writing, and that based on the condition of the wheels I would need another $100 refund to help get it somewhat fixed, or a new set of wheels. He asked me to email him everything so he could review it. About an hour later he called me back to apologize about my experience and that this should never have happened. He agreed to refund me an additional $100, making the total I paid for the wheels $520.
Now, when you see the pictures of these you are going to be like on WOW that is bad. However, I contacted the owner of JaxWax and he hooked up with some product and lended me his buffer to buff and polish the wheels. When you see the end results you are going to be shocked. The wheels look almost perfect now. All the swirl marks came out and almost every scratch is completely gone. Plus, there is a nice shine to them! For a total of $550 plus my time of buffing/polishing them, I think they were worth it!
Here is a video of me buffing/polishing and below that are some pictures of the light bar and wheels. FYI, I am not a pro at buffing/polishing; I have never used a dual action buffer until the other day for the fist time! The video is 20 minutes long, however, I wanted to capture some live buffing/polishing to show the before and after results.
https://youtu.be/Vc9YLFIU18o
Here are the wheel pics:
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