Heritage Wheels & Threepiece.US Review: Are They Any Good And What’s With All The Negative Reviews?
If you are looking at custom 3 piece wheels, there’s a company making some very eye catching designs that probably got your attention.
Heritage Wheels.
Heritage Wheels offer a wide range of unique, custom multi piece wheels that really stand out.
However, if you look them up you will also find countless negative reviews about the company and their wheels.
What’s really going on here? Are their wheels good or not?
In this post, I’m going to cover Heritage Wheels and tell you what you need to know.
The History Of Heritage Wheels
Heritage Wheels was started by a company called Threepieceus from California.
Threepiece.us was founded in 2014 and started out by bringing in vintage JDM wheels into America and selling them.
They would buy the vintage wheels, refinish them, put new lips and barrels to make them into more desirable sizes and them sell them on.
This became very popular and soon enough they had a full scale business just importing, refinishing and selling wheels.
However, they also noticed a demand for wheels in sizes that the original Japanese wheels never came in, such as larger sizes that could be used on more modern 5 lug cars with bigger diameters.
This prompted them to start producing their own wheels and thus Heritage Wheels was born.
Heritage Wheels specializes in making 3-piece custom forged wheels in unique designs that resemble many of the classic JDM wheels without being copies or replicas.
They offer a wide range of eye catching designs with deep lips, low offsets and dazzling finishes which have proven to be very popular, especially with widebodies coming back in style.
Threepiece.us also still supply wheel parts such as lips, barrels and hardware, and continue to import and refinish popular multi-piece wheels from Japan as well as making the Heritage Wheel line.
How Heritage Rims Are Made
Heritage Wheels make their multi-piece wheels in-house in California, making the lips, barrels and faces and finishing and assembling them.
They currently offer two different types of wheels – cast and forged.
Cast
Heritage Wheels’ cast line of wheel feature designs similar to their 3 piece designs but in a cast monoblocks configuration.
This allows people who don’t have several thousand dollars to spend to buy wheels with a similar design.
Unfortunately, they don’t release much information about how their wheels are actually made, so I assume they are gravity cast wheels made in China, but I can’t confirm this.
Forged
Heritage Wheels forged wheels are made from forged 6061-T6 aluminium.
From what I gather, they important the forging blanks and then machine them in-house to the design and specs for each wheel, similar to how other American wheel companies including HRE do.
Heritage Wheels claim that their wheels are designed using FEA testing to ensure the strength of the wheel. However, FEA software is extremely expensive (HRE claims to have spent $25,000 on their FEA software), which makes me suspicious that Heritage actually have FEA software themselves, since they are a small company. However, It’s possible that they outsourced the design work to someone who does.
Finishes
Heritage Wheels offer a huge range of custom finishes for their wheels which includes standard powder coat, polished, brushed, candy and chrome finishes. Basically, they will make whatever finish you want on the wheels.
Safety Certifications
Unfortunately, there is no mention of any safety testing or wheel safety certifications such as JWL, VIA or TUV, so it’s almost certain that their wheels haven’t passed any of these tests (or been tested at all).
Warranty
Heritage Wheels claim to offer a 1 year structural warranty on all of their wheels.
The Problems With Heritage Wheels
Unfortunately, if you do even a little bit of research online, you will come across a mountain of negative comments and reviews about Heritage Wheels and Threepieceus.
Just a simple Google search will reveal a 3 star rating from 141 reviews, and a 2 star rating on Yelp at the time of this writing.
These negative reviews are due to several recurring issues that have been going on for the last couple of years.
One of the biggest issues is significant wait times, with some people waiting over a year to receive either wheels or parts such as lips and barrels.
Now, wheel companies are notorious for long wait times, but this is by far the worst I have heard. Not only that, but there is little reason why off-the-shelf parts should take so long to arrive. And it’s not some odd occurrence, this is a recurring issue many people have reported.
The next issue is consistent reports of terrible customer service. Apparently, Heritage and Threepieceus as quick to respond and will answer all of your questions before you place an order. But as soon as you do, that’s where things go south.
From there, they don’t answer emails, phone calls or texts, and if you do manage to get a hold of them they will just run you around and won’t give you an answer as to where your wheels or parts are 6 months later.
There are countless stories of this exact same occurrence happening over the last 3 years or so, which points to this being a recurring issue rather than just one or two bad experiences.
But it doesn’t end there.
Once people finally do get their wheels or parts, often they are the wrong size, offset, finish or have been put together badly.
There are reports of loose bolts, sealant not being applied correctly and the tire leaking, mismatching barrels, poor finishes that chip easily and more.
The worst part about all this is that the staff seem all too quick to blame anything under the sun other than themselves, and they won’t resolve the issue.
They also have a policy of no refunds, so don’t expect to get your money back if they do send you the wrong parts or mess something up.
What makes this even worse is that to buy a set of their wheels you will be spending several thousand dollars. When you take this into account, service and issues like this are unacceptable, especially when you could buy wheels from other companies with a far better reputation for the same price.
Overall, all this just screams of poor customer service and business owners who are not interested in actually taking care of their customers but just want to get your money.
Heritage Wheel Lines
Here are the current wheel lines that Heritage offer.
Cast
Standard Forged
Directional Forged
Concave Forged
How Much Do Heritage Wheels Cost?
Heritage Wheels range from as low as $230 per wheel for their off-the-shelf cast wheels, to $3200+ on the low end for custom multi-piece forged wheels.
Conclusion – Should You Buy Heritage Wheels?
In my opinion, no.
While I do think a lot of their wheels look great, and many of the finishes look amazing, there are far too many red flags with this company for me to recommend them.
From the shocking customer service, to the extremely long wait times and then the high chance you get the wrong item once it does finally arrive, this is not a company I would want to do business with and therefore cannot recommend them to anyone else.
I also don’t like the fact that there seems to be absolutely no safety testing whatsoever of the wheels, and certainly no safety certifications. Which means you have no idea what you are getting in terms of wheel quality, not a risk I’d be willing to take (especially for the price).
Overall, based on my research, I would stay away from Heritage Wheels and go with one of the many other wheel companies who do know how to run a business and will make you quality wheels and look after you as a customer.
What Wheels to Get Instead
If you are looking for custom forged 3 piece wheels, here are some of the top brands I would recommend looking at who have a good reputation of providing high quality wheels and good customer service:
FAQ About Heritage Wheels
Are Heritage Wheels Reps?
No, Heritage Wheels are not reps. They make unique wheel designs and genuine multi-piece wheels. However, I wouldn’t recommend buying them based on the other information in this post.
Are Heritage Wheels Good?
In my opinion, no. Heritage Wheels have a history of poor quality and terrible customer service, and they also don’t mention any safety testing or certifications such as JWL or VIA.
Are Heritage Wheels Real?
Yes, Heritage Wheels are real wheels. They make genuine multi-piece wheels as well as cast monoblocks wheels. However, I wouldn’t recommend buying them based on the other information in this post.
Cars owned: Mk2 Golf with 1.8T swap, BMW E28 with M30B35 swap, BMW E36 328I Mtech, BMW 750IL, Nissan 300ZX, Honda Civic EF
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