I never thought I'd be annoyed at wheel shopping, but the amount of frustration this has brought on is almost staggering. I am doing the RE-Speed TII brake up grade on my FB, which requires 15 inch wheels. I already have a set of Hankook 225/45/15 RS-3's that only have 3000km on them and I don't want to lose money by trying to sell them, so I'm stuck with a 15 inch wheel. Much bigger than that and the car will just look silly anyway.

The problem is I want to run a 15x8 in the front and a 15x9 in the rear with a pretty low offset and 5x114.3PCD, but I'm having a hell of a time finding anything at all. Most of what I have found is either front wheel drive offset, 4 bolt, too big, too narrow, or way too expensive. I'm ok with spending some money on them but $1500+ for a set of wheels is a lot to choke down.

I've checked into Diamond Racing Wheels but I'd prefer a tasteful street wheel. I've emailed Enkei but they don't do custom specs and I emailed ESM and am waiting for a replay. Volks would be great, but at 6-700/wheel it's a little (lot) more than I can handle and as per their website 15x8's or 9's aren't really available. This isn't one of those I searched (really only looked in two places) and now am posting. I've been looking for two weeks at every site I could think of, as well as eBay and just googling random search terms in hopes of finding any leads at all. Hell, I can just imagine what my data bill is going to be for my iPhone.

I'm looking for reputable companies that can make a set of wheels without breaking the bank. Any help at all is appreciated.

Thanks
Chris

 

chips motorsports makes custom wheel, but I don't know about pricing. Also they are in the U.S. around Detroit. It does not cost you anything to email them.

http://www.chipsmotorsports.com/forged-wheels

 

If u are going to go states side, id recommend CCW, speak to John....a custom wheel will unfortunately always cost more than an off the shelf rim.

 

Did u try xxr? I know they arent "well known" but they have a wide variety of rims and now they have some crazy offsets too.

 

I've seen these on a couple Miatas and they look awesome. Low price, and a variety of widths and offsets in the 15" range so if you're still running a 4-lug these should work.
http://949racing.com/6ul-wheels.aspx

 

I've checked CCW's website, but at $2500/set, that's just too much. I know it's not going to be cheap to get them custom spec'ed, but I'm trying to find that fine line between price and quality. Not looking to cheap out, but $2500 is half of what the car cost me. It would just hurt too much. Didn't see any mention of anything smaller than a 17 either, although once I saw the prices I just stopped looking.

I've looked at XXR but the15's aren't 5 bolt and the 16's aren't available in 9 inch wide. If I end up going 16 I'm getting Enkei RPF1's. There's 4 bolt wheels up the ying yang but nothing 5 bolt, 15 inch and tasteful that will work. I'm considering another option but have to sell my tires first. The real kicker is the reason for the 9 inch requirement is I ordered some 240Z ZG style rear fender flares but after a quick test fit I don't think I'm going to like them, and I'm not hacking up unreplaceable parts of the body for a maybe will, maybe won't situation. I'm heavily leaning towards the Enkei's in 16 now, so someone buy my tires!!!

CS13B, I am doing the RE-Speed Turbo II brake swap, so they need to be 5x114.3. Already have the hubs and everything so it's too late to think 4 bolt.

Thanks all

Chris

 

http://www.workwheelsusa.com/

They do custom pcd upon request, but I have no idea what that will cost you.

The work meister S1 2-piece wheels come in 5x114.3 in a 15 in a variety of offsets.

 

I've checked and base price for Work Wheels is at lowest around $500/wheel. I would LOVE something like Works or Volks, but they are just so damn expensive. I've got other stuff I need to do as well. Maybe when everything is done I can just save and buy new wheels every year instead of worrying about every part of the car.

 

After about an hour of debating with myself, I ordered a set of BBS RS 16x7.5+14/16x8.5+14 from VRWheels.com. They are used, but I bought them at a used BBS level price. In the pics they looked pretty good, with only a bit of curb rash and some dirt to worry about.



Plan is to have the centers and hardware repainted and polish the living hell out of the lips. Anyone know a good reasonable place to have that done in the London area. I can handle the polishing as long as the lips don't need serious surgery. Any tips on prepping them myself to save a few bucks?

 

And I thought I was gonna be the only one with these on my FB...lol. My fav rims . Definitely gonna look sexy!

 

Congrats on the wheel purchase. From what i can see the lips are pretty clean of rashes. What i would do first is throw them on a balancer to make sure they arent bent..rolling them up and down your driveway wont suffice...ask me how i know lol.

If they are straight and true, you can proceed with the refinish. Save yourself some cash and polish the lips yourself. Take the rim apart, unbolt the bolts, use an exacto knife to separate the silicone that sealed the inner barrel to the outer lip.
You can get economical polishers, different grits of sandpaper from princess auto or CT. There are tons of polishing literature on the internets.
Itll be time consuming but itll keep some cash in your pocket and keep you busy this winter. Good luck

 

Mazda RX-7 EFINI TYPE, what are you doing with yours? I'm thinking a nice deep but not too dark red for mine with either the same or black hardware.

That's the plan. I figure I can do the lips and drop the barrels and hardware off for painting, then when they're done I can give them the lips for reassembly.

Any experience with the bolts breaking? That happens to me a lot. Would be just my luck to break one trying to get them out.

 

I have been lucky so far, my CCW bolts are ARP so they are pretty beefy lol, you should be fine. The wheel bolts are not tightened to anything over 50ft-lbs...well mine werent anyways.

spray some pbblaster/wd 40 in for good measure before you take the bolts off

 

I have original gold centers, so I'm keeping them that way. But I'm gonna need new barrels and lips...for the rears at the very least, due to my wide bodied self...lol.

 

The RSs are sweet rims, I've been thinking of some myself. If you don't mind my asking, what did these run you?

I guess you won't be using your Hankooks - I'd offer to take them off your hands, but shipping might make that a non-starter..

 

I would look into SSR i believe they will redrill wheels and they usually have a ton of offset choices

 

In the london area go to Re-Speed (dj55b). I'm getting the same things on my wheels blasted and powder coated for a very reasonable price when I get them apart soon.

 

After shipping they'll be $1035US. Which considering brand new these can be $3k is a pretty good deal for a set in good shape. Depending on shipping the tires might be near the same price for a new set. I'm open to reasonable offers though. If they don't sell they'll either end up on the Slowfire or I'll grab a set of 15x8 Diamond Racing Wheels and use them for autocrossing.

 

Well my wheels have finally arrived and they are in what can only be described as "used" condition. Two have some pretty bad curb rash, the other two aren't nearly as bad which leads me to believe there is at least one person in Japan that does not know how to parallel park. Looks like I may need a new lip or two, but I'll see if it's cheaper to have a wheel shop clean them up. I can imagine it wouldn't be since there will likely be some welding involved. The beauty of 3-piece wheels is there are options. Will definitely need new bolts, which are about $45....PER WHEEL. Wow! Pay to play I guess. A quick test fit on the car shows that they fit damn near perfectly up front. Can't test fit the rear since it's still 4-bolt, but I already had a 15x8 +20 on there with lots of room. They are pretty dirty but the faces look to be in good shape, they have all the caps, and all the centers go on and off easily.

 

Just showing off. After 4 months of work they are finally finished. They are not completely perfect as the lips had so much oxidation and pitting that there was only so much I could do to make them look good. As with the cars paint, they will look great from about 6 feet away. The powdercoating was done by my good friend Sam at RE-Speed. After looking at many colour samples and agonizing over it I finally found one that really grabbed me. It's call Bullseye by Prismatic Powders. Actually came out lighter than the sample looked but I was worried the sample might be too dark so it worked out nicely. Black bolts from blackforestindustries.com. Not entirely sure how they'll look on the car, but they will certainly catch some stares. Not bad for my first wheel refurb.

 

You should of let me do them this color :P

 

Yeah, but then after I bolted them on I'd have to torch the car and cry.

 

where did the neon rim idea come from? it was kind of cool on the neon in gran turismo 2, but that was only because it was neon coloured on a neon. There's a group of about 6 cars that park together at my school with their neon rims. All of which are honda powered....just saying

 

Sam, you're doing powdercoat too now?

Oh god, after the FB comes back from Classic I just might have to wire every subsequent paycheque directly to ReSpeed... SO many things I want to do!

On an off-note, does anyone know someone who repairs rims? I've got a set of 83LE Rims but one of them looks like it had a very tough encounter with a curb and needs some mending. All the material is still there, it's just flattened like crazy. Either that, or does anyone have a single 83LE rim laying around they'd be willing to part with?!

Jon

 

Sam welded the bigger curb damage on my lips. Can barely tell any damage was ever done.