Wheels
After the shocks/springs (okay, and the cupholder) the worst OE part on the car is the Dunlopsided tires. And for performance
gains you can't beat a set of lightweight wheels (as an unsprung rotating mass lighter wheels allow the car to handle better, brake shorter
and accelerate faster).
BBS RC ball polished finish 17x8 & 17x9 wheels for track and stock wheels for street
The M Roadster is very hard to find wheels for. The very small offset means most wheels flat out won't fit and the few that do
typically require spacers. In my search for lightweight wheels that are affordable I came to BBS. BBS makes very high quality wheels
that differentiate themselves immediately when shown next to cheaper wheels. There were two BBS wheels that I liked... the BBS RC
and the BBS RK. At the time of my purchase the BBS RK was only available in a painted finish that I liked, but didn't love, and
the size for the rear wheels was going to have to be 17x10 which would have screwed with my autoX classification (which I shot to
hell anyway, but wasn't originally planning on doing it). So I went with 17x8 and 17x9 BBS RC wheels in a polished
finish. The polished finish
not only looks better but increases the strenght of the wheel because the polishing process uses small balls to polish the wheel
and this creates a "shot-peen" like strength increase. Recently the BBS RK became available in the same finish as the RCs
(Press Release).
The BBS wheels are very lightweight, 17lbs for the 17x8 and 17x9. The stock wheels are 21lbs front and 24lbs rear. Losing weight in
the wheels is like losing 3-5 times as much weight from the body of the car... or in my case 66-110lbs. The difference is
noticeable.
The RC's and RK's both require a spacer to be used. It is a custom BBS piece and BBS supplies the spacers and special lug bolts to
make the setup work. I have no complaints about the setup except that it is a pain cleaning the RC's... it would be much easier to
clean the RK's.
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| Car With Stock Wheels And Yokohama AVS Sports |
Car With BBS RC and Kumho VictoRacers |
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| Notice How Much Closer Hub Interface Is To The Out
Edge Of The Rim |
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| Wheels Face Down With Use Measuring Tap For Reference - Stock |
BBS Clearly Has More Offset - How Do We Fix That... |
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| With The BBS Supplied Spacer |
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| BBS RC Without Spacer |
Spacer In Place |
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