jchapura

Can anyone recommend a preferred reseller (online or chain store) for Forgeline wheels? OZ wheels? BBS wheels?

SupremePower

We offer all 3 at competitive pricing. Will shoot you a PM

Petza914

Also, Tire Rack carries OZ. Wheel Enhancement handles Forgeline.

mikes70

Have the DS3's on my Pro-touring 70 Camaro. Forgeline is among the best! Looking into installing them on my 997 as well, b/spacing and type are currently under review. $4k ish

sandwedge

[QUOTE=jchapura;16172915]I've sent them an email; it's generally telling if they don't respond... But it's still a little soon.

The four wheel price at most resellers is about $2.5K.[/QUOTE]


That's less than 1/2 the cost of the most reputable manufacturers of Forged wheels out there. Hard to understand how they can do that to the same quality standards as the Forged wheel market leaders.

jchapura

I guess that's what we're trying to understand - can this type of wheel - forged but not top brand - be acceptable (well, maybe, slightly better than just acceptable) for just a daily driven 997 that sees a few autocrosses a year and maybe one DE? In other words, is the $2500-4000 premium for top brand just an insurance policy rather than a critical safety feature or race-needed function point?

jchapura

Golly, back in the day, I had one of those split bumper Camaros, SS, 4-bolt main, 12-bolt rear-end. Black - just like yours. I put Konis on it and a sway bar kit and spring lowering kit from a renowned road racer (can't remember the name). And WS6 steering gear ready to go in. The ravages of NYS salt-on-the-roads just took its toll. Loved that car. Yours is a beauty.

hexagone

I'm sure they'll 100% fine - but why spend 2500-4000 on a junk brand with no credibility vs. buying a used set on here, an OEM take off, or a brand new set from a company like Apex for less than $2k.

https://www.apexraceparts.com/shop-b...e/porsche.html

I spent about 3 years of my life deep in the wheel industry - and most stuff out there is not worth buying.

jchapura

I'm confused. You seem to equate low cost with junk but then recommend a wheel that's even less costly than the ones first talked about. What are those essential features of the Apex that allow you to recommend them?

hexagone

I never said low cost = junk.

Apex makes tried and tested, affordable track wheels. Hundreds if not thousands of happy customers.

The VS Forged wheels cost $4k because that's just marketing. Most of the forged wheel companies are in that range, so they charge the same.

What I'm saying is they're junk from an engineering perspective. Likely little actual testing, rudimentary cad work, milled out of some chinese forging blank and sold to the masses. Not that most other companies do much different - but that's the issue with most of the industry. Very few players with legitimate R&D efforts against quality products with a company that backs what they sell.

If you uploaded a post-it on here with a wheel design drawn in 20 seconds, I could probably come back to you in 20 days with a set of wheels made like it for ~$6k. That's how easy it is to make custom wheels nowadays.

sandwedge

Just curious, what's the weight of the VS wheels you're looking at? As for your questions, I'm not an expert on wheel technology but I've had all kinds of after market wheels on all kinds of cars over the years. My experience is that the less expensive ones are heavier, less robust (had two of them crack) and the finish doesn't hold up nearly as well as the higher priced ones. As for the technical aspect of this, I think Petza914 sums it up as good as it can be done in the post quoted below.

jchapura

From the Titan7 brand, who's in this same class of wheel - forged but not top brand - I had to extrapolate weights from their chart (they have the fitment but not the weight listing on the chart yet) - approximately 20 fronts, 22 rears.

I seems that the Apex website doesn't have the Porsche 19 inch fitment I'm looking for.

hexagone

Sure they can.

They just make very little money doing so. Their designs will be basic, have little machining time and come in standard finishes.

Do you want basic, under engineered lack luster wheels even if they are FORGED?

If you want the absolute highest quality/design/weight you want a net forged wheel. Very few wheels are in fact done so, because it requires an extremely heavy press that actually shapes the aluminum close to the final shape of the wheel, so that the grain (direction) of the metal is actually aligned with the shape of the wheel. Then some final milling is done. This is where companies like BBS, Volk, Work and OZ are differentiated with large capital investment into factories that do this.

The difference with almost everything from the US is that it's generally milled out of a donut shaped forging. This on its own is not bad, but the grain of the metal here is based on that donut shape, not the shape of the final design. Metal is removed from here.

The wheel industry is largely optics and marketing, with a few players that consistently put out quality parts.

jchapura

One of the manufacturers I've mentioned says they use a 10000 lb press - is that considered in the class you mention?

hexagone

I want to stress that capacity of presses and specific machinery don't alone make good wheels. Even the idea of a "good" wheel is subjective.

To answer your question however - in the class of net forged wheel, a press would have to exert pressure in the range of 5-8000 tons. Maybe the actual press weighs 10,000 lb - but that has little to do with the integrity of the wheel.

https://bbs.com/en/technology/forged_line.php

On top of that - there's the design itself, the weight, the testing procedure, the company's pedigree in making wheels.... isolating things like what machine they were made on, how much they weigh or their price are not absolute indicators of what a quality wheel is.

Consider: You could buy a $15k Chevy Sonic or a $150,000 Mercedes AMG GT. They both have doors, transmissions and get you relatively safely from point A to point B.

When you actually get to needing to perform - driving sensation, materials, braking distance, speed, chassis tuning, there are hundreds of thousands of more hours that went into the engineering of the AMG GT that did not go into the Chevy. The example is similar to wheels - you need to know exactly what you are going to do with your wheels and what's important.

If you'll do the occasional spirited driving in your 911 - a set of rotary forged (cast) wheels is totally fine. For even 80% of the Porsche population Forged wheels are probably overkill - but marketing and the social media machine are hard at work.