Wheel decision, help me out

[AJW6]

Right now, I have 15" Falken Hanabis with 195/50R15 tires, and the wheel gap leaves something to be desired. I also have 16" rotas with no tires. Trouble is I can't decide which I want. Here are the pros and cons of each. Help me decide.





Falken Hanabi
Pros
-VERY lightweight. Just 11 pounds each w/o rubber
-pretty high quality wheels from what I understand
-Already has good tires on them

Cons
-Pretty small
-tires are small too
-Not crazy about the look

Notes: I got them for $320 with good tires (2 had camber wear)






Rotas
Pros
-LOVE the design. Seriously, love it.
-Bigger than the falkens, which is good

Cons
-A lot heavier. Around 19lbs each.
-I put a LOT of time/money into painting them, and it still didn't turn out very good. Not noticeable from afar, but definitely up close
-No tires, so I have to buy some and get them mounted



So what do you say? form over function? vise versa?

[zuzu_]

Originally Posted by AJW6

Right now, I have 15" Falken Hanabis with 195/50R15 tires, and the wheel gap leaves something to be desired. I also have 16" rotas with no tires. Trouble is I can't decide which I want. Here are the pros and cons of each. Help me decide.

I like the look of the Hanabis ("fireworks" in Japanese, btw) more than the Rotas, personally.

As for the wheel gap, I think your problem is that your tires are too skinny. I'd have to compare with the OEM default of 185/65R14 using the Tire Calculator, but I'm guessing 195/60R15 would have been closer to the correct wheel+tire circumference.

You'll have to buy new tires either way.

Update: FAQ stickied says 195/55R15.

[Bdub215]

i say go 4 the Rotas.

[Milky]

i say sell both, and buy a set of enkei rpf1's in 15x7 et 35. there 9.9lbs each then, and would look much better on the car.

[PhatRoyale]

Keep the 16s and get 205/45/16 tires.

Should reduce the wheel gap a bit more.

[fishexpo101]

I personally would trade the heavier wheel for the lighter one - but that is me (lighter wheel, good manufacturer, have tires in hand = good to go). Also will leave extra money for other projects. Keep in mind if you go with the Rotas, not only will you have to cost out the tires, but mounting and balancing as well. Only drawback from the 15" set you have, is the diameter is smaller than OEM - speedo will read higher than actual road speed (not a bad thing if you have a heavy foot), but also exacerbates the appearance of a huge wheel gap.

Not a whole lot you can do about shrinking that gap, unless you drop the car on some lowering springs. I assume that you don't want to screw up the speedometer reading, so you will have to stick with tires that have approximately the same circumference. That would indicate - taking OEM as 185/65R14 - a 15" wheel would have to run a 195/55R15 a 16" wheel running a 205/45R16 - all numbers previously mentioned above.

Unless you had plans to drop it - then a larger diameter wheel would have more "visual" pop. As now, many cars are running larger diameter wheels to give the illusion of better scaling between the wheels and the car's body.

Hard to tell from the photos - but it looks like the finish wrinkled up on you or didn't stick the wheel in the first place. Did you shoot clear over the paint? Were the wheels perfectly smooth, straight, and prep'd before you shoot paint on them? You have to prep alloy wheels pretty carefully, any bit of dirt or residual film will ruin even the best quality paint job. This sort of thing is 95% prep - 5% painting. Also, if you don't allow enough time for the paint ot dry before you shoot clear or if the clear is not compatible with the base paint (different families of solvents) - then you could wrinkle, sag the paint like that.

Also if the wheels were anodized or powdercoated previously - all that would have to come off before you shoot paint on the wheels.

[AJW6]

What happened with the paint job is the guy before me sprayed them a rusty color and it was terrible. Paint was super thick and peeling and bubbling and all kinds of screwed up. So I got some aircraft remover and tried to get it off. That worked mostly with a few spots of paint that I just sanded down real smooth. I figured the primer would smooth it out. So I primed and sanded and primed and sanded and primed and sanded. Then painted and put a clear coat over it. Still can see the places where the original paint was.

Heres my revised plan. I'm going to get new tires regardless of what rims I pick. Then I'm going to cut the front coils and drop it 1.5" in the front until I can afford struts and lowering coils. Should look good either way.

[fishexpo101]

I would high advise against cutting springs. Sure it will lower the car, but you will also hasten the demise of the strut and potentially have a dangerous handling car at the same time (I'm pretty sure the OEM springs have a progressive rate on the fronts).

Best to leave it until you can afford to do it correctly. No sense doing it on the cheap and especially for "looks", only to find out down the road that you have screwed up the upper mounts or even distorted the sheet metal up there. Same can be said for the rest of the suspension and attached components. The cut spring will have a much shorter travel with not much difference in spring rate - that means the car will bottom out more often than usual - so all that impact force will be transmitted around.