Wheels allow cars to go from a glorified boat anchor to viable transportation. That’s really more of a literal definition, though. A wheel to me signifies a whole lot more than that. It’s my honest belief that wheels make the car. Take my Caprice as an example, or Jen’s Concord. Here are cars that are seemingly just transportation for the gray haired community (two-tone brown paint and vinyl tops don’t help much), yet when you change the wheels you change their stance, their look, and ultimately the personality of the car. What one other mod can do all that ? Today, with advancements in C & C machines, and with tire companies looking to develop the next hot product, you and your car now have more options than ever before. Pick the right design with the right color, twist some lugs, and you can transform any car from Not to Hot. I like my Dayton knock offs on my Caprice, but if I had some more cash I’d definitely spring fro some gunmetal gray Foose Nitrous wheels. If money was no object, what wheel would you slap on your ride ?

One of the perks of working for a large automotive chemistry supplier is that you can occasionally slip a personal job into the testing lab. Henkel’s been hard at work on a new paint stripper designed specifically for stripping aluminum wheels, and I just had to ”help” out. I dragged my new Rials into work to try out the new chemistry and the results are fantastic! Next up is straightening, then polishing and paint. Check out a side-by-side and a closeup of the original order marks on one of the stripped barrels after the jump.

I’ve been following Wes’ wheel project, which turned out great. Now, it’s time for mine to start. This pile of wheels and tires was dropped off on my back deck this week and includes four old 15×7 Rial basketweaves that will eventually grace my Rabbit. They need a lot of work before that can happen. I plan to go whole-hog 80s-style and color-match the centers to the planned body color of the car – Cirrus Grey Metallic. The best thing about this is that the wheels were free in return for some work I did on a friend’s BABE rallye car last year. I only got it running safely, no big deal at all….

I stated in my blog about tax season that I’m getting my factory 5-spoke wheels powder-coated black and slappin’ on a new set of performance meats. That process started today, when I dropped the wheels off at a local business called Powdertech where they’ll do the hard part for me.  The benifits of powder-coating over regular paint are pretty substantial.  Not only does it cure rock-hard, but it can withstand quite a bit of heat and won’t lose its shine over time.  There are kits that allow you to powder-coat at home, but they require that you use a dedicated oven that will never be used for cooking food again. Have you had something powder-coated for your car?  What was is it ? And was it worth the extra money?

I got a sweet set of rims from VMR but they didn’t offer them in the color that I wanted. So, I painted them. Now before you all go chastising me, I used a spray gun set up and am going to have a friend clear coat them for me. That’s not to say you can’t get great results from a rattle can, and in fact I would have done it that way if I could have found the color I was looking for. Here is an example of how they should turn out.

It took a little work to get over putting the initial scratches in the brand new 19s, but these puppies came out nice in my opinion. I figured a gold face with the chrome lip would look the best, so I tapped the lip off really well prior to sanding and painting.

Here’s the way the rims looked originally. More pics, including the finished product, after the jump!

Taping off the rim was actually really easy because the chrome lip was a seperate piece from the face and a nice groove was provided for me to run the tape.

Sanding the rims was a pain but I wanted to make sure I got every part.

Sanded down…

First coat

Third coat

Final coat

I’ll have another update for you guys after I get these clear coated this weekend and get some rubber on ‘em.

What did you do this weekend?

So my new rims from Velocity Motoring came in yesterday, and I gotta say I’m pretty impressed. These are the new two-piece v715s, they are 19 x 8.5 ET45 and I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to use a shoe horn and some Crisco to get these in my tiny wells! They were an awesome deal and I’m definitely happy with the packaging, plus they only took four days to get here. I think I’ll run 225-35-19s on these. What do you guys think?

I’ll update you guys with how they look on the whip. Check out the full un-boxing after the jump.

The Chrysler 200C is cool and all, but I think the wheels are on a whole ‘nother level. They’re forged aluminum in a seven split spoke design using Alcoa’s new finishing technology on the polished surfaces. The interiors of the tuning forks are matte finish instead of brushed or (gaack) painted green. I’m completely ga-ga in love with these wheels. They are perfect. See a detail shot after the jump.

Yesterday Speedhunters blogged about a sick looking Golf, which we chatted about at the office all day.  There were arguments for and against the stretched tire look. My vote is for it!  If I could pull it off on my smart I would be rockin’ an uber-stretched wheel, but in the meantime I’m just a wall-flower to the whole stretched movement.

Anyways, after talking about it so much yesterday I decided that I needed to know more about how it’s done. So after a little bit of magic with the google I found out that this stretched tire thing isn’t safe at all. The main idea is to stretch a tire three to six inches beyond the width of wheel it was designed for. Beyond that, I don’t think there is much to it.  Now, check out how it’s done by these apparent noobs in a video after the jump. Do not try this at home!

Dymag isn’t going to be offering the 100% carbon fiber wheels that Rob blogged recently. But at the SEMA show, the company apparently struck a deal with manufacturer HRE to produce these hybrid wheels, with carbon hoops, aluminum centers, and titanium hardware. The rims will likely retail for between $2500 and $4000 each, meaning that a full set of them will cost between ten and sixteen times more than what I’d generally pay for an entire running car. More at BornRich.

I’ve seen carbon fiber wheels with magnesium centers like these Dymags, but nothing all carbon. Well, turns out "an international group of PhDs, physicists, and engineers, using the latest carbon fiber nanotube (CTN) aerospace nanotechnology" are working together in a secret underground laboratory to create the world’s first one-piece, 100% carbon fiber wheels. Only, they’re not sure which car to build them for first, and they haven’t decided on price. But we will definitely let you know when we learn more. In the meantime, if you own a high end sports car, they want your opinion. I think it would make sense to start out with the Z06, but then I drive an old Mopar with 15" steel wheels, so what do I know…