Chrome Clad
 

Beware all ye Laramie buyers. I knew this from my 3/4 Ram days, but the rims on the Laramies which are look nice and chromed are just, in fact, plastic cover over the stocked painted aluminum rims. Chrome clad means plastic covers and that Dodge again cheaped out. Beware. The Mopar catalog has real chrome 20 inch rims in it. I would negotiate those instead of the crap that comes on it. Ah, chrome clad........

MisterScott, I actually was supprised by this when I test drove a Laramie. They also come on the Sport which I bought. My first thought was what kind of crap is this? But after thinking about it for awhile this is my conclussion: I am terrible about keeping chrome clean, I hate polishing stuff so I like when I can just wash and go. Well every chrome wheel I ever bought looked like hell within a year. So now I can take off the crappy looking plastic chrome cover and either replace them with new crappy chrome covers or sand them out and paint them! I can black out my wheels or match the truck or what ever. So even though I agree with you about them being cheap, in this case cheap will serve me better than actually having to purchase a new set of wheels. One reason I always bought the sport models was to avoid all the chrome, but to be honest, after 10 years with all green and black, I like having that little be of chrome again but I'm still not going to polish it. Jeff.

Chrome clad... what's underneath?
 

Just bought a Blue 1500 Sport Crew and was told that the chrome clad was chrome applied to aluminum... it was a cold snowy day so I didn't look too close at the wheels and at a glance they looked nice and a good compliment to the chrome nerf bar. Could probably go back and complain but in the end I got a hell of deal. Does anyone have a picture of what the wheels look like under the "chrome clad" hubcap? If it isn't too bad on the straight aluminum maybe the best thing is to toss the cap and leave it at that...

I have not looked at my 09 sport cladded wheels yet, but my 02 was clad over steel and you could not take the cladding off without destroying it. It is not a hubcab, but is "cladded" around the stock wheel. You could cut them off, but simple it is not.

The cladding is bonded to the aluminum wheel. You would destroy the wheel if you tried to separate the two. The chrome clad wheels look just like chrome and are much easier to clean and maintain. In my opinion its a better wheel. You get the looks of chrome, the brake dust doesn't bake on (much easier to clean), and its a lighter wheel (less rotating mass = better MPG's, although probably negligible). Just my $0.02...

Thanks for that information. As I noted above, they look to my eye like a chrome wheel and I guess I'll run them and see how they hold up. I can't see why they'd have less brake dust sticking on to chromed plastic vs. chromed steel but if it's easier to stay clean and shiny that's a plus. On my recently-traded 06 Dakota I was using bottles of Hot Rims to keep the aluminum perfect as I really dislike the look of a dirty front wheel. The 09 Ram has 4 discs so that problem would probably double.

The heat transfer properties of steel chrome are different than that of the plastic chrome clad aluminum wheel. The steel wheel transfers the heat from your braking to the surface where it bakes on the brake dust. The plastic chrome on aluminum does not transfer the heat as efficiently and thus the surface of the wheel stays much cooler. This concludes our engineering and science lesson for today. :)

Thanks teach!

On the brake dust topic, I will say that on my 02 quad cab ram with clad steel wheels, the dust did start bonding to the plastic. It only started during the past year. Maybe I did not wash it as often, but it did start to etch into the plastic. I would recommend to wash at least a few times each year and don't use any metal polishing compounds on the plastic. You don't want anything with abrasive elements, just simple cleaners and a good rag.

This is true, you cannot use standard chrome polishes and cleaners. There are special cleaners specifically made for the chrome plastic.