Posting this as a PSA to hopefully save someone else some aggravation. When researching here on TGO, there were a few people that mentioned the OER and Hawks versions of the 17x9 GTA wheels being the same. Based on those claims, I ordered a set of 4 OERs through a vendor who had a nice sale on them. Upon attempting to install, it quickly became apparent something was wrong.

The first issue is the machining of the lug bores and pockets. Notice the machining of the pockets breaches the first row of the crosslace pattern, illustrating the larger diameter of the cuts. More importantly, notice the lack of a tapered seat. These OER wheels are designed for mag-style lug nuts.


Here's the Hawks version for comparison. Notice the machining doesn't fully breach the first row of the crosslace pattern, the pockets are visibly smaller, and the lug seat has the correct conical shape to accommodate factory lugnuts.


While I could've simply bought mag-style nuts and gone on with my day, my insistence on keeping the factory plastic nut covers won out. This turned out to be a good thing, as ot exposed another issue.

Here's the box from the OER wheel. Notice the center bore is 72.6mm. These would have required hub-centric rings to bring them down to the correct 70.8mm diameter


And here's a Hawks wheel, showing the 70.8mm spec stamped on the barrel.


Other differences observed:

-Finish quality on the OER is very poor. Inconsistent finish, dry spray, and orange peel. The Hawks aren't perfect either, but much nicer finish than the OER.

-Hawks are fullly painted, including the backsides and barrels. The OER are left raw.

-Hawks have a Topline stamp that is not present on the OER.

It's worth noting that I purchased SKU 451795, which is for a single wheel; obviously I purchased 4 of them. This is the same SKU available through Classic Industries (OER's storefront), Jeg's, Summit, etc. I'm not sure if the SKU for the full set of 4 through Classic is for the same (wrong) wheels.

I had to buy two sets of wheels, do two mount and one dismount of tires, and endure weeks of FB Marketplace tire kickers to resell the OERs (couldn't retrurn because I put tires on them before realizing the problems).

Short version: Just get them from Hawks.

 

OER seems to have a lot of substandard products...

 

I was wondering and had pondered buying OER vs Hawkes. Sounds like if your interested in quality, Hawkes is the way to go for the 17" wheels. Kudos to @BlueTA91 !

 

Thanks for sharing this info.

Just for reference...how is your socket clearance the the factory lugs on the Hawks Vs. the OERs? I know my factory 16's are pretty darned tight. I spent a bit having them refinished, so I'm a little sensitive to that. I ended up buy some thin wall aluminum lug sockets from Harbor Freight to feel comfortable getting those on an off.

 

I really didn't give it much thought when I put them on, and I sold both the OER and the stock 16's, so I can't offer a comparison photo. I always do lug nuts by hand and take my time. Nothing exotic as far as sockets - just the same Craftsman units I've had for 25 years.

 

I put the Hawk's black GTA wheels on my '92 Z28 this past spring and have been happy with them. Fit and finish was good and they actually balanced well. The socket clearance is tight, but if you use some sort of thin walled socket you should be fine.

 

Went with the Hawk's myself.
Only thing I'd change is the machine groove where spokes meet the hoop, i feel it's just a bit to large. It's a small thing and not a huge deal

 

Mine have that issue, but only slightly. I've seen some that had a more aggressive cut.

 

I don't have any repro wheels, so I'm just looking in, and I find it interesting, but not surprising at all, that the OER wheels were so poorly made.

OER doesn't sweat the details, but since Hawk's makes no bones about selling OER's other poorly reproduced parts, then I'd be surprised if Hawk's cared enough to find its own manufacturer to reproduce wheels that were already being reproduced. Maybe they did, but if not, then the OER wheel in this thread was probably from a bad early run, and Classic and OER are still trying to pawn them off, rather than write them off, and the "Hawk's" wheel in this thread is probably also OER, but from later runs, where the failures of the early runs were corrected. I suppose a confirmation would be if the OER wheels also wear the Topline stamp, like on the Chinese wheel that Hawk's sells.

Either way, most surprising is that a manufacturer might've actually addressed the failures of the poor reproductions, because none of them ever care enough to go back to the drawing board, but somebody apparently did go back to the drawing board for these wheels.

 

My guess is these are all coming out of the same factory, but with varied specifications based on who commissioned the production runs. Someone made the conscious decision to spec a lug seat and center bore that aren't a direct fit for a 3rd gen fbody - I suspect they were trying to adapt it to multiple applications, but won't pretend to know what those might be. OER's site calls out part numbers for lug nuts, so they seem to be aware that the seats are machined for a non-stock configuration. Side note for anyone that reads this and isn't clear on the difference, here's a visual.


The main purpose of my post was to call out that at least two different specs exist for these wheels, one of which is definitely not a direct swap for the originals on our cars. What looked like an opportunity to save a couple hundred bucks ended up biting me in the end, so my hope is that this saves someone from making the same mistake I did.

As for the quality issues in the 3rd gen resto market, that deserves a whole dedicated thread. In a word: trash.

 

Yes, like the console lid that broke in half the first time I tried to open it. I've never received anything from them that wasn't complete junk.