Reversed Smoothie

Can someone tell me your opinion on these rims from a performance standpoint? I mean they're stainless alloy with chrome coating, would aluminum be better? We've been known to get a lot of snow here in Ohio at times. I'd like to keep my car garage kept, but there's also rain and what not that can promote rust at some point. How hard are these going to be to keep clean? What about the offset? I'm not sure what exactly the offset means, except that it has to do with the width of the rim I think?

Notice I didn't say a thing about what you think about the look of these rims, so don't bother telling me, I don't care what you think.

Thanks,

Mathius

 

Those things will rust like HELL without regular and I mean regular cleaning.

 

why dont you add a pic to show us what your talking about. that could help

 

 

I dont know about those on a thirdgen, they look more muscle car era to me. If you do use them just get a chrome cleaner like eagle one they make a spray on spray off, that works great on my chrome rims, but youd have to do it alot of the time

 

Does anyone know if these particular rims are offered in an aluminum rim? I had a picture of them saved, but couldn't remember where from. I did a search for them on Yahoo and there's about a million web page matches for them, all the ones I checked were steel alloy. If someone knew offhand where I could get them in aluminum, it might save me some time searching.

Oh, and can someone please explain to me what I should be looking for as far as offset, or how it relates to rims? Just from what I've read, I assume that different offsets allow for different tire widths?

Mathius

 

heh

 

You could also try to clear coat the backside of the rims. that would make it easier to take care of. You could always call the company and ask them.

 

Steel wheels will rust, eventually, but those are A/R's, and for $83 each, they better be some quality hardware. Cleaning will be easy, you can clean a chrome steel wheel with almost anything, as opposed to aluminum, where you have to worry about clouding and oxidation.

Looks: It will be hard to match the look of a steel rally wheel in aluminum. I can see where you are going with this style wheel, and I think it could work.

Performance: For 95% of us, a steel wheel will work as well as an aluminum one. Steelies may be heavier than many aluminum wheels, but probably will be nearly the same as most stock Thirgen Alloys. (except GTA's)
I'm actually fitting my Autocross tires on NASCAR style steel wheels (16x10) from Diamond.

Backspacing: The distance from the inner wheel lip to the mounting surface. On an 8-inch wide wheel, a wheel with 5 inches of backspacing will be flatter across it's face than one with 3 inches, where you will have a very 'deep dish' apperaance.
Another analogy; The cars you sometimes see with little tiny wheels that stick all the way out of the wheelwells have little to no backspacing. Hope that helps.

 

Offsets: the Offset of a wheel is the distance from the middle of it's width to the mounting surface.
Say you have a car with 8 inch wide wheels with Zero offset. You will have 4 inches of backspacing. If you have a wheel with 2 inches of offset, you will have 6 inches of backspacing.

Most modern cars have lots of positive offset, which moves the mounting surface to the outside of the wheel. Older cars usually have little no no offset, and negative offset produces the 'deep dish' look.
FourthGens use about 2 inches of positive offset, while Thirdgens are Zero offset on an 8-inch rim. To use a fourthgen wheel on a ThirdGen, you need to install spacers to push the wheels to the outside. ThirdGen wheels would stick way out of the fenders on a FourthGen

Backspacing is what you need to make sure that really wide wheels, like 10 inch wide or wider, don't hit the inside of your wheelwells, suspension, etc. Offset is what makes the wheel look shallower or deeper.