What About Wheels?

Originally from Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Well, the car is now over at Evil Genius Racing. It feels strange not having it here to work on, needing our love, care, and attention. Empty nest depression?

We're feeling pretty good about the car now, even though we hit two more snags today. The Honda wheels we had on the car won't work for us. The center hole is too small to fit over the front wheel bearings. We tried on other wheels at John's shop (EGR) and found some interesting almost fits, including a 15x7 wheel, but offset was a problem.

Anyway, we're looking for six wheels now, 14x7's most likely, and might have to get customs made in steel at about $100 each. Tires will be Falkin Azenias 615K.

Opel GT Source (OGTS) carries wheels for the Opel GT. The Team Dynamics wheels the sell look great, but the OGTS price is quite a bit higher than steelies, understandably. We're looking at Diamond Racing Wheels now and will get six steel wheels. The minimum width in 15's is 8", 14x7's are available, and the price is around $85 each. Note, instead of "offset" they use "backspace".

Team Dynamics, black, 15x7, +15 mm offset

OG, graphite, 15x8, +25 mm offset

Note - photos of the wheels above are from the OGTS web site.

We called Opel GT Source to discuss wheels and Gil gave us a set of used wheels! Aluminum, C4 turbine style, 15x7's. We'll be picking up this week when we drive up to Sonora to meet Gil, pick his brain, and pick up some other parts. Once we have them and see everything fits we can measure them for the other two we need. A minimum of six wheels/tires are recommended for these races.

In other news, the top front shock mounts are trash. The car had been on jack stands for the last three weeks and we never had a chance to see how the suspension worked. Well, it's pretty damned soft, and we in effect have no front shocks. When we push down on the fender we can see the top of the shock moving freely. We discussed going the coil-over route if we can find cheap set at a pick-n-pull, but, after doing some research and found that front coil-overs are out of the question. They just won’t fit inside the tiny a-arms. We'll get a part from OGTS to weld in/replace the corroded shock mount.