Menu
What's new
By:
Advanced search...

Lightweight alloy wheels

beatport

beatport

Members
Messages
8
Reaction score
3
Location
Bournemouth
Car
Honda Accord 2.0
Hello guys!

I have searched the forum for any information regarding lightweight alloy wheels but couldn't find anything. So I am in a look for 17" inch alloy wheels for my Accord 2004 2.0 I-VTEC SPORT, however I want a lightweight alloy wheels, because the weight of the rims affect a lot the performance of the car. I just changed my winter set( 16" steal) with my summer set(17" factory model) and I can feel a big difference in the acceleration. I would appreciate if you give me some information about brands and also from where I can get them. My budget is around 400 pounds, which I think should be enough even for brand new. Thank you very much for your help!
 
Hi there.

I dont want to sound rude but £400 for light weight alloys isnt enough.

Most light weight wheel sets will cost upwards of £1000 new.
You may be able to pick up a used set from ebay.. But have you factored in tyre cost afterwarda too?
 
Ok.. But on a 17" x 7" in gloss black it says they are £516 with ET50... Or £555 with ET45.

So they are over your budget. But yes they would be ok on the accord
 
The alloys i used to use when i had a civic were ROTA
These are very well made copies of the more expensive JDM wheels i.e. volk etc.

They are well known in the JDM, honda and civic scene but for 17inch your looking at around £600 ish quid for a set of rims.

I had many sets in my time including GT3, subzero and slipstream on my civic.
I think the slipstream was the lightest wheel they do and weighed in at around 4.5kgs each without tyre

I usually bought them second hand through the civic forums and ebay though.

Have a look here
http://www.rarerims.co.uk/wheelshop_range.asp?id=1


i also found that with our roads they tend to buckle quite easily - lol.
 
team dynamics pro race 1 is one of the lightest wheels and not so expensive too. The highest offset, say ET50 or ET45 starts from 7.3kg. Personally, I think the pro race 1.2 looks very good, and is not much heavier, easier to find at ebay, etc. Rota are also very light wheels, harder to find methinks..

I also find big difference between the summer 17" and the original 16" with winter tires, think the original Enkeis are about 8kgs, which is good.
 
if weight is a issue why not get 16"? as the wheel is smaller it will rotate faster to ? or is this info incorrect?
 
Lightweight wheels are a minefield.

There's 'light' then 'light' lol. Rotas are a good budget option for wheels, but if you're after lighter than that you'll be looking at Volks. I've got TE37s on my Type R in 17s. They weight 5.1kgs each without tyres. But they cost £1800 for 4, but £1900 inc delivery.

Good luck dude.
 
What's the weight of a standard 17" alloy?

beatport said:
Hello, and thank you for your reply.

I already got a brand new set of Pirelli 17" which are fitted to my factory rims. I just found this-http://www.rimstyle.com/alloywheels/wheel/index.html?wheel=team_dynamics_pro-race_12_gb&colour=gloss_blac. They are light, less than 8 kilos per rim, however I am not sure will they be strong enough. I don't want to buy brand new set of wheels and bend or crack them in the first pothole.
Click to expand...
 
from reading on civic forums the weight of a 17 inch standard Honda oem alloy like an ep3 wheel is approx 10.5kgs without tyre . Pretty much same for all Honda 17inch oem alloys
 
10.5kgs sounds about right for the weight.

The standard ATR alloys weigh 9.9 kgs each.
 
I'm struggling with the description of lightweight rims making a big difference to acceleration. From the figures above, it looks like the maximum weight saving from lightweight wheels may be 5kg a rim, so 20kg from a set of four. This would result in the weight of the Accord 2.0i VTEC going down from 1372kg to 1352kg (Parkers' figures). So the power to weight ratio would go from 111bhp/tonne to 112bhp/tonne. Your right foot is clearly a lot more sensitive than mine but, on a practical level, the difference in weight is less than half a tank of fuel. I can't spot a difference in the performance of my car on a half tank as opposed to a full tank.

You could attempt to alter the gearing by fitting smaller wheels, because lower gearing would give better acceleration. But the difference in diameter between, say, the 17" wheel on 225/45 tyres and the 16" wheel on 205/55 tyres (the recommended sizes) is only 2mm. Again, I personally would not be able to spot that. A slight variation in tyre pressure would probably have a bigger effect. I did run my Accord on 205/50 tyres for a bit, but even on those the difference in diameter (23mm) only translates to 2mph difference at 60mph (Your speedo says you're going 60, but you're actually going 58mph). Again, I couldn't tell the difference.

Lightweight rims would have an effect on unsprung weight, which would improve the ride. They're also useful on racing vehicles where you're trying to shave every possible ounce off the weight, and also want to be able to heave the wheels around in the pits. But as I say I'm struggling to see how they would, in isolation, have any noticeable effect on performance on a normal road car.
 
Thank you very much for your replies guys! Regarding my budget which I have mentioned, I was meaning 400 on top from what I would get from my current wheels( which I think can get 200).

Draga said:
if weight is a issue why not get 16"? as the wheel is smaller it will rotate faster to ? or is this info incorrect?
Click to expand...
Yes you are right, the smaller diameter of wheels do affect it, but already got new set of tires so don't want to buy new ones again.

teacake said:
What's the weight of a standard 17" alloy?
Click to expand...
The weight of the standard 17" rims which I have is around 12-13 kg. each.

teacake said:
I'm struggling with the description of lightweight rims making a big difference to acceleration. From the figures above, it looks like the maximum weight saving from lightweight wheels may be 5kg a rim, so 20kg from a set of four. This would result in the weight of the Accord 2.0i VTEC going down from 1372kg to 1352kg (Parkers' figures). So the power to weight ratio would go from 111bhp/tonne to 112bhp/tonne. Your right foot is clearly a lot more sensitive than mine but, on a practical level, the difference in weight is less than half a tank of fuel. I can't spot a difference in the performance of my car on a half tank as opposed to a full tank.

You could attempt to alter the gearing by fitting smaller wheels, because lower gearing would give better acceleration. But the difference in diameter between, say, the 17" wheel on 225/45 tyres and the 16" wheel on 205/55 tyres (the recommended sizes) is only 2mm. Again, I personally would not be able to spot that. A slight variation in tyre pressure would probably have a bigger effect. I did run my Accord on 205/50 tyres for a bit, but even on those the difference in diameter (23mm) only translates to 2mph difference at 60mph (Your speedo says you're going 60, but you're actually going 58mph). Again, I couldn't tell the difference.

Lightweight rims would have an effect on unsprung weight, which would improve the ride. They're also useful on racing vehicles where you're trying to shave every possible ounce off the weight, and also want to be able to heave the wheels around in the pits. But as I say I'm struggling to see how they would, in isolation, have any noticeable effect on performance on a normal road car.
Click to expand...
The weight saving from the body of the car is one thing, another is saving from parts which are moving, especially from wheels. For example the braking distance is mainly affected by the diameter of the disk, so for example when a object is rotating the mass is multiplied and it have a big difference in terms of force it needs to get it moving. I hope you could understand what I was meaning, if you want more exact explanation you can search in google for rotational forces.

accord_n22 said:
The alloys i used to use when i had a civic were ROTA
These are very well made copies of the more expensive JDM wheels i.e. volk etc.

They are well known in the JDM, honda and civic scene but for 17inch your looking at around £600 ish quid for a set of rims.

I had many sets in my time including GT3, subzero and slipstream on my civic.
I think the slipstream was the lightest wheel they do and weighed in at around 4.5kgs each without tyre

I usually bought them second hand through the civic forums and ebay though.

Have a look here
http://www.rarerims.co.uk/wheelshop_range.asp?id=1


i also found that with our roads they tend to buckle quite easily - lol.
Click to expand...
I think that I will stick with the team dynamics ones. Anyway thank you for sharing your experience.
 
The weight saving from the body of the car is one thing, another is saving from parts which are moving, especially from wheels. For example the braking distance is mainly affected by the diameter of the disk, so for example when a object is rotating the mass is multiplied and it have a big difference in terms of force it needs to get it moving. I hope you could understand what I was meaning, if you want more exact explanation you can search in google for rotational forces.
Click to expand...

Brakes are a somewhat different situation. A larger disk is effectively acting as a longer lever than a small one. With lightweight wheels, your wheel effectively stays the same size, it's just the mass, or the distribution of the mass (or both) that changes.

It's a looong time since I did any real physics, so I'm completely rusty in this area, but I don't think the speed of rotation on a normal road wheel is ever likely to make more than negligible difference to acceleration. You'd get better ride from reduced unsprung mass, possibly better handling from the wheel's ability to conform to undulations in the road surface more quickly, possibly slightly better turn-in because of the lower wheel mass, but any lower inertia from the reduced mass of the wheel is not going to be much help because ultimately it's still got to drag the weight of the car behind it.
 
teacake said:
Brakes are a somewhat different situation. A larger disk is effectively acting as a longer lever than a small one. With lightweight wheels, your wheel effectively stays the same size, it's just the mass, or the distribution of the mass (or both) that changes.

It's a looong time since I did any real physics, so I'm completely rusty in this area, but I don't think the speed of rotation on a normal road wheel is ever likely to make more than negligible difference to acceleration. You'd get better ride from reduced unsprung mass, possibly better handling from the wheel's ability to conform to undulations in the road surface more quickly, possibly slightly better turn-in because of the lower wheel mass, but any lower inertia from the reduced mass of the wheel is not going to be much help because ultimately it's still got to drag the weight of the car behind it.
Click to expand...

Un-sprung mass is vastly different to sprung mass. Removing 1 kg ofunsprung mass equates to around 4kg of sprung mass. The. Due to reducing rotational mass increases the reduction further.


If you have a bike wheel.. Spin the wheel whilst holding on to the spindle.. Now try and 'turn' the wheel to either side.. Its gyroscopic force is quite hard to overcome... Now imagine reducing that weight.. It will make direction change much easier as the rotational mass would be less
 
Ok I haven't explained it very good, because I don't really remember what my uncle explained to me. Anyway he is engineer and he has a racing team back home and from him I now that the weight of the rim matters on the car acceleration and also the size. I have experienced it by myself as well. On my Honda, when I changed the 16" steel wheels with alloys which are 17" there was a noticeable difference in the acceleration. Also on my previous car, Vauxhall Astra 2.0 16v it was with stock 17" when I bought it but after that, I changed them for OZ which were significantly lighter and there was a major difference in the performance 0-62mph, it improved by 0.6 secs. So thats why I am after light weight alloy wheels. I will ask him again to explain me more exactly how it works and then I will post it. Thank you for responses.
 
Okay, this site, if you can bear all the maths, is very detailed on the subject.

If you want to skip the maths, the writer gives a very rough multiplier for weight saving of 1.6, but also points out that lower profile tyres, while saving mass, may increase the rotational inertia because there is a bigger proportion of the mass moved out towards the edge of the wheel's radius. This may result in no gain in effective weight saving.

So, at best, a saving of 5kg per wheel would give an effective saving of 32kg.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top