I’m looking for technical help or recommendations on: __ 17 inch wheels
My second post in 24hrs, apologies if I’m abusing the patience of people who reply.
2.0 NC bought with OE suspension and 16’’ wheels. Used as daily and on track 2x/month.
I was advised to swap for 17’’ before I have coilovers and wheel alignment done, and go for 215/45/17 tyres. I’ve decided on Michelin Pilot Sport 4.
Are these wheels any good?
I don’t want to spend a fortune so just looked for reasonably priced 17/7.5J wheels. With the tyres I’m already spending £1100 for a set, anyway. I do notice though that these wheels are ½ the price of cheapest wheels on e.g. BBR site.
I’ve used the tyre size calculator to confirm that when looking for wheels, any 17’’ 7.5J or 7J wheels should work with 215/45/17 PS4’s – but do let me know please if I’ve missed something elementary!
I guess the question marks would be weight and offset?
Neither are listed, weight has nothing and offset is just ‘best fit’. I believe the stock wheels are 17" 7J with an offset of 55mm, not sure how/if that offset should be modified for wider wheels…
I believe the fairly strong advice is to try to keep unsprung weight to a minimum, so the recommendation is to pay attention to that specific factor–especially if you track it on a regular basis. Fitment is important but if the “upgrade” results in heavier wheels, you’ll reduce handling, not improve it.
If going to 17" and maintaining light weight is prohibitively expensive, you’re best off looking elsewhere for upgrades. Wheels can get expensive pretty fast!
Are you not happy sticking with 17" OEM wheels ? I know they’re 7j not 7.5 but they’re fairly lightweight all told.
Other than that speak to NickD of this parish about some of his Traklite Gear options. 5 or 600 quid buys you a set of 4 although a used set of OEM would come in under half that…
Then cost per ‘Kg’ saved seems excessive, for example the Enkei RPF1 seems to get recommended occasionally, it seems to be ~6.75Kg, the stock wheels are 7.7Kg, not sure that saving is worth the extra outlay over the stock wheels, which also (imo) look better
Got it. OEM wheels it is then. They look good and weight is right. Thanks reggie747 and NoSkill both. I see new ones on ebay for £140/wheel, I’ll look for used now.
If I go ahead and buy those, can I just stick 215/45/17 PS4s on and assume everything will fit?
The reason you rarely see a weight for a wheel is firstly you have to take one out of the box and physically weight it. If you have offset options wheel weights will differ just within the same width and diameter. Secondly, you get judged on it. Many after market wheels are salad dodgers.
I though the OEM wheels weighed more than that.
I have the RC32 wheels in anthracite (aka dark grey), this link to a post on ride height shows them on the car in the very first post.
I really like them, and they were cheaper than refurbing the original wheels (after selling the original set). I bought them with Asym5 fitted and balanced for £660 from pneus online. Good quality tuv approved wheels for the same price as Chinese no name cr@p.
Hi Nick. I am interested to know why the offset affects the weight for a given diameter and width. Is the spoke arrangement and hub mounting thickness (and hence weight) not the same for different offsets and it is just the relative position of these compared to the rim that differs for different offsets?
EDIT: I suppose where the design of the wheel has the spokes terminate flush with the outer rim, then the bigger the offset (wheel dish) the longer the spokes and the more material?
I see some OEM wheels on eBay but only new, price is £140 for one and comments mention centre caps are missing. So these RC32’s, which are cheaper & can be bought as package with fitted tyres look like an interesting alternative.
Cheap, Light, Strong. - Pick any two because you can’t have all three.
The Brock RCs I went for were down to cost. So I went Cheap and Strong.
I don’t know what the weight difference is as the wheels came mounted so I couldn’t weigh them, but cost wise this option was significantly cheaper than 4 x refurb, 4 x tyres, 4 x fitting and balancing.
I then sold my OE wheels for about £150 to someone who wanted OE, so for about £130 per corner I replaced my tatty old wheels fitted with ditch finders with shiny new good looking strong wheels with my tyre of choice.
When I did this, I was very aware of costs, if I was more focused on extracting the nth degree of performance from the car, I may have gone for Strong and Light, (nice set of Oz for a grand maybe, or maybe a refurb of the OE).
What I would never do is choose Light and Cheap at the expense of Strong. World of pain with buckles, flat spots and catastrophic failures.
