Wheels are a major part of the exterior aesthetics of a car, even an immaculate example can be made to look shabby if the wheels aren't up to scratch.
The wheel centre caps on my 335i were looking a bit worse for wear, bubbling, corroded and dog eared from being removed a number of times. They were the older style too, showing the cars age.
Like most people I went straight on eBay and ordered a set of replacements, from a seller called asamuk2015, for the grand sum of £5.99 delivered. (Warning, read on to see why you should never order from this seller, or anyone selling fake centre caps).
They arrived individually wrapped in bubble wrap, looking a darn sight better than my old ones.
I went out and got them fitted right away, which instantly transformed the wheels' overall look for the better.
Before and After
They look great right?
Not any more they don't, after only one trip to work I was down to 3 centre caps. I did think they were a bit loose when I snapped them into the alloys, but didn't think they'd fall out. On the others, the BMW roundel in the middle had started to delaminate from the main plastic moulding.
I'm not sure how many times it'll take me to learn that buying cheap means you buy twice, I thought I'd learnt my lesson on my E46 after buying some cheap copy side repeaters, clearly my inner cheapskate couldn't resist the low price.
Lesson now hopefully learnt for good, I called BMW Hereford and ordered some genuine centre caps (part number: 36136783536).
At 6 times the price of the fake ones, £36.04 for 4, I hoped the genuine caps would stick around a little longer than one trip.
The genuine caps also came packaged individually, but instead within official BMW plastic bag packaging with the part number printed on.
It was immediately obvious these were far superior quality to the fake eBay specials. Instead of a disc glued to the main plastic body, the genuine ones have a metal skin that is attached to a plastic substrate. The clipping features on the back are also far more robust. When fitting them into the wheels it required a fair amount of push to pop them into place, much more reassuring.
I'm delighted to confirm that after several months, no centre caps have been lost and the wheels are looking better than ever. If you're going to swap your centre caps, do yourself a favour and just buy genuine ones, they really are worth it.
Have you ever been stung by buying cheap parts? Have you ever had it the other way round, where cheap parts have been better? Let me know in the comments section below.
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