Four months for (and four) corrosion worries.
If you’d like to see the part one of this mini series, peek the embedded link at the bottom of the post…
Over four months since the really bad ideation and execution of this “experimental” run, the wheels that I was very excited for in January… have finally (disappointingly) arrived. Now, it wasn’t necessarily a four month process – in fact it would be closer to three but not being in country of delivery hampered collection – long ordeal nonetheless.
It starts with a letter summoned to my delivery address in April stating that my shipment was detained by local customs. In the letter, the summary is that I would need to pay a customs fee – which is expected. Two options were presented; settling it with the company’s agent (RM48 written fee), or handling it myself with my own agent. I don’t have the latter.
Annoyingly, the letter was sent late. More so was no email sent, neither did anything reach the provided phone number; but this is my fault as the number provided had by then expired. Time interval listed is important as the company stated past a month of inaction, the shipment would be taken in by them. The company sent me the physical letter half a month after it was detained, so half the time remaining to settle the shipment.
Required was an invoice of the item (so no dodging impending taxes). The experience was not pleasant – dead phone lines, fussy application design and confusing lack of steps after queries – at least their AI agent could easily route me to a real person. The customer service agent requested an email be sent to them, which I happily found out that the email they provided was the Kuala Lumper branch, and that the item was in Bukit Mertajam Customs and therefore out of their jurisdiction.
Extra downtime contacting the right customs, progression – forwarding the relevant description of the item and price after receiving confirmation that the parcel was with them. What served me next was a sum of RM817.60 – included with that agent fee of RM50.90. Yummy.
Five days later, the wheels finally arrived! And checking them now… shit.
Yup, these indeed need restoration. Not that I’m surprised by the condition as seen in the previous post – I knew and understood that it would need to be done up – but its more complicated now after its trip up from Japan to Malaysia.
Now that I know, I shouldn’t have skipped out on protecting the shipment as the box was very tattered. Moisture undoubtedly got into the shipment at some point and it has corroded the wheels. Its on basically every part of the wheel, crusting already at the lug holes, which as I’m told are restorable but no less alarming. Attached below is the worst wheel affected.
None were spared from the free weight reduction, the best one having only light surface corrosion but rust is rust. Otherwise, the wheel is as is from the photos. They’re battered, two wheels having some sort of dented lip – terrible, but the aim was to restore them before usage.
So, the total from initial purchase to sitting in my house totals out to… S$860.38 as of today. Not great… if I wanted wheels in 4×100 guise, replica sets of other wheels are available in 15-inch sizes for a quarter of the price, but without MUGEN collector’s tax for a real piece… I’ll take what I can get.
So five months later, could I verify that importing wheels is a good idea? Probably? Best if you know exactly what you’re doing. Mine is still the only example of an “unsuccessful” shipment, but apart from corrosion it at the very least still arrived intact. Good enough per se, restoration (that I anticipated) is all it needs.
~Efini
Read more: Fuel for Thought: Buying wheels from overseas and the journey (Pt. 1)
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