3-Piece Wheels

By Ben Schaffer

The Real JDM

I wanted to discuss an often overlooked topic about 3pc wheels. Wheel companies have interesting ways to increase the diameter of rims without increasing the actual centers of the wheels. This NSX is a perfect example because it runs staggered rim sizes of 19″ up front and 20″ on the rear. If you notice the lips, the rears have an extra inch of height built into the lips to accept smaller centers. As a result a larger wheel can be used without engineering a larger center. From a distance the visual downside is that it does not look any bigger because the size perception of wheels often rests with the spoke length. However on a car like the NSX rarely do 20″ wheels look appropriate, this is a great way to pull off 20″s while still making the car look sporty and not ridiculous.

Its one of the many tricks of 3pc wheel making which can ultimately make your wheels appear to be bigger or smaller. The opposite technique of this is using a reverse drop on wheels which gives a flat lip instead of a more traditional step lip design. The result in that case is a center face that is an inch larger looking than if you had a traditional step lip. As a result for most custom 3pc wheel companies you can order a 19″ wheel with 19″ center forgings with a reverse drop or the same 19″ wheel with 18″ center forgings with a step lip. In this case we essentially have a 20″ wheel with 18″ center forgings and a mega step lip to cover the difference.

End result, Work is able to sell a 20″ Work Meister S1 3pc wheel without needing to engineer a larger center disc. This is a very cool picture that Matt posted on his blog because I’ve seen the 20″ Meister S1 3pc in catalogs for years but I’ve never actually noticed one used before. You can spot it quickly as I have by looking at the the lips/outer halves.