2026 Jeep Wrangler and Gladiator Recall: Steel Wheels May Crack and Separate

The wheels under 641 new Jeep trucks left a supplier plant in Novi, Michigan with their walls machined thinner than the drawing called for. Chrysler's filing describes the consequence in one flat sentence: the wheel can crack and separate, and vehicle control goes with it. On the line asking what warning a driver gets first, the filing says None.

Chrysler is recalling 606 2026 Jeep Wrangler and 35 2026 Jeep Gladiator trucks under NHTSA campaign 26V456000, filed July 16, 2026. All 641 were built inside a six-day window in November 2025. FCA puts the estimated share of that population carrying the defect at 100 percent, and that figure should be read literally. The company is not projecting a failure rate. It is saying the suspect wheels are out of spec and that build records, not broken parts, are what identify which trucks received them.

This recall traveled badly on its way to readers. Several outlets reported that Jeep had ordered owners to stop driving, and at least one put a do-not-drive order in the headline. The federal filing contains no such instruction. NHTSA's record for 26V456000 carries the park-it and park-outside flags both set to false, the remedy language includes no interim guidance, and the dealer bulletin tells stores to schedule the repair and arrange alternate transportation while the truck is in service. A BMW starter recall filed eight days earlier makes the contrast plain: NHTSA's summary line for that campaign opens with the words Park Outside. When an advisory exists, the paperwork carries it.

The Issue

A steel wheel starts as stamped and rolled sections, then gets machined at the mounting face and bead seats to reach final dimension. The wall is the material carrying load between the rim and the center disc. Remove too much of it during machining and the part still looks right, bolts up right, holds air, and moves down the assembly line without complaint. What it no longer has is the metal the engineer sized for the job.

Fatigue is where the shortfall surfaces. A wheel spends its service life absorbing cornering loads, potholes, curb strikes, and the cyclic bending that comes with carrying one corner of a two-ton truck. A thin section concentrates stress at the transition and cracks earlier than the design allows. Chrysler's wording is that the wheel can crack and separate, and the filing states that it happens without prior warning.

Maxion Wheels of Novi, Michigan supplied the part, identified in the filing as component 5VH22RXFAB. The scope is narrower than the coverage implied. This campaign reaches only trucks built with the steel wheel, sales code WAA, a 17-inch powder-coated steel unit that sits at the entry point of both the Wrangler and Gladiator equipment lists. Trucks wearing the aluminum wheels fitted to Rubicon and the upper trims fall outside the recall. The story circulated as one about Jeep's toughest off-roaders. The wheel at the center of it is the one that comes on the least expensive way into the truck.

Affected Models

Model	Model year	Production dates	Units
Jeep Wrangler (JL)	2026	Nov 10 to Nov 16, 2025	606
Jeep Gladiator (JT)	2026	Nov 10 to Nov 15, 2025	35
Total			641

Trucks built before November 10 or after November 16, 2025 are not included, and neither is anything built without a steel wheel. Chrysler also notes that some vehicles inside the build window have already been screened out of the population. The dealer bulletin references roughly 683 vehicles against the 641 in the federal filing, a gap that reflects the bulletin covering North America while the Part 573 report counts United States vehicles.

Chronology and Investigation

Stellantis opened an internal investigation on December 9, 2025, about three weeks after the last suspect truck came off the line. The company's Technical Safety and Regulatory Compliance organization worked through supplier and vehicle production records between December 2025 and June 2026 to bound the population. As of June 24, 2026, it had recorded no customer complaints, no warranty claims, no field reports, and no injuries tied to the wheels.

The safety defect determination came on July 9, 2026, and the Part 573 report reached NHTSA on July 16. Seven months separate the opening of the file from the federal notification, and the entire affected population was identified from build and supplier records rather than from a pattern of failures in the field. That is the sequence a supplier-traceability process is supposed to produce, and it is the reason the number is 641 rather than a full model year.

Reported Incidents

There are none on record. Chrysler's filing documents no crashes, no injuries, and no customer claims as of the June 24, 2026 cutoff. The recall rests on the supplier's production records and the company's own analysis of the machining condition, not on wheels failing in customer hands.

What Owners Should Do

VINs became searchable at NHTSA.gov on July 23, 2026, so any 2026 Wrangler or Gladiator owner can confirm inclusion now rather than waiting for mail. Owner notification letters are scheduled to go out September 4, 2026. The remedy is already available, which is the part of this recall that matters most and the part the stop-driving coverage obscured. Dealers are not waiting on an engineering fix or a parts release.

Dealers will inspect the date codes on the steel wheels and replace any that fall in the suspect range, along with the valve stems, at no charge. Owners can reach FCA customer service at 1-800-853-1403. The manufacturer's number for this recall is 05D. Federal law bars dealers from delivering an affected new vehicle before the recall service is complete, so trucks still in dealer inventory get handled before sale.

Warning Signs, and Why the Filing Says There Are None

Under the heading asking what warning can occur, Chrysler entered a single word: None. A wheel with a thin wall gives up no symptom a driver can act on. It does not shimmy first or leak air as a courtesy. The condition lives in the machined section and shows itself when the crack propagates far enough to matter.

That absence cuts in a specific direction. Because there is no early warning to watch for, waiting on the September letter buys nothing. A VIN check takes a minute and either clears the truck or does not. Owners running the aluminum wheels that come on Rubicon and the upper trims can stop there, since the campaign never reached them.

How Long Will the Recall Repair Take?

Short, by recall standards. Chrysler's published labor allowances run 0.3 hours to inspect the date codes on all four wheels, 0.8 hours to inspect and replace a single wheel, and 1.0 hours to inspect and replace two. Most trucks that come in will be a morning appointment at worst, and many will be an inspection that clears the vehicle and sends it home on its original wheels.

Parts supply should not be the constraint it often is on recalls of this type. The volume is small, the component is a base-model steel wheel rather than a specialty casting, and the supplier is a domestic Tier 1 with the tooling already running. Chrysler's bulletin also directs dealers to provide alternate transportation while the work is performed.

Bottom Line

This is a small recall that was handled early and reached owners with a remedy already in place. Stellantis found the problem in its own records three weeks after the last affected truck was built, spent six months bounding it, and filed before a single wheel failed on a customer's vehicle. Judged as a piece of process rather than as a headline, it worked the way the system is designed to work.

The risk to an individual owner is real but narrow. A wheel that separates at speed is a serious event with no warning ahead of it, which argues for running the VIN check today instead of waiting on September mail. It does not argue for parking the truck, and no federal filing or manufacturer bulletin asks owners to. The gap between what the paperwork says and what circulated online is its own lesson about recall coverage: the campaign number and the filing are public, and they answer the stop-driving question in about thirty seconds.

Find your Jeep Wrangler recall information: https://www.mopar.com/en-us/my-vehicle/recalls/recalls.html

Coverage of this campaign split on a basic factual question. Carscoops and GoodCarBadCar reported a do-not-drive advisory; MoparInsiders reported none. NHTSA's structured record settles it: parkIt and parkOutSide are both false for 26V456000, and the remedy field carries no interim owner guidance. The comparison case is BMW 26V441000, filed July 8, 2026, where NHTSA titles the entry 'Park Outside: Engine Starter May Corrode and Overheat' and the remedy explicitly instructs owners to park away from structures.

The affected wheel is sales code WAA, a 17-inch powder-coated steel wheel that is base equipment across the Wrangler and Gladiator lines, not the aluminum wheels fitted to Rubicon and the upper trims. Aggregator framing that cast this as a recall of Jeep's most capable off-roaders inverted which trucks are actually covered.