Expensive wheels or junkyard finds? (Page 1 of 2)

Look through the photo galleries, lots of cheap black steel rims.

I strongly suggest you have whatever tires you plan to run all mounted and balanced.  Six tires are good, eight is better. 

Like others have pointed out, if you don't you need to have a plan on how to make that happen.  Some tracks have tire services on site and others don't.

Depending on your car and alignment, one set of tires is likely to be enough.  We did blow a tire in the last race so you never know when you will need a spare.

We also run a fair amount of camber which increases our tire wear.  It turns better but we do pay for it.

I currently have 14" and 15" wheels for the Z.  I can clear a 300ZX rotor in the rear with a 14" rim using a small spacer.  I don't know how big the NX2000 brakes are but you might clear with a 14.

The 15s my brakes clear with no problems.

The problem with 14s and 15s are limited tire options around the 200 treadwear range.  The most common 15" size is 205/50r15.  If you are okay with that, then go for it.

I am looking at going to 17" wheels for better tire options, I want a wider tire.  It looks like I can buy some nice new 17x8 or 17x9s for around $160ish dollars a wheel.  That's way to pricey for me.  So I am going to work on a 5 lug swap so I can buy used wheels easier.

Most Lemons cars seem to run on stock wheels.  I am sure some guys run new aftermarket wheels but that is not that common.  Used aftermarket wheels can get pretty cheap too.

Wheels are unlimited, it's your money.  Do what you want.

We went up 16" wheels so we could have better tire options. Do some looking around the TireRack and Discount Direct and you can find decent 15" wheels for $85 each and decent 16" wheels for a little over $100, perhaps even cheaper if they are having a good sale.

junk yard wheels and craigslist tires...for a sentra Id guess 6 wheels (if you have a tire machine)  and 8 tires would be safe.  we bring 8 wheels with tires on em, plus a couple extras to change over sat night.

I constantly scoured craigslist and found a nice set of 17" x 8" wheels with the right bold pattern and offset. The car came with a nice set of wheels but for $100, the other set was too good to pass up, they were MUCH lighter too.

Most experienced Lemons teams recommended to me to have one "primary set" of don't-cut-the-corners tires /wheels (get good tires / decent wheels) then have at LEAST 2 spare mounted tires, especially if you run uni-directional ones.  For the "spare-practice-rain" tires I bought the best used tries I could for around $60-$70 a pair, max.  I found some really good ones off of Craigslist again.  On the test day after it dried out at Thunderehill, we ran the "spare" used tires on the heavy rims and they performed flawlessly.

Finding some decent used wheels doesn't seem to be too hard out here on the left coast, other places my be more difficult.  SO try and get at least one set of decent wheels (ie. lighter than stock, strong with good brake ventilation if possible) and 2-4 addition wheels for spares

Now when I cruised around the pits I did notice that there were some nice rims and tires on some pretty sorry-ass looking cars, so that does seem like one area few scrimp on - wheels and tires.

No way your wear issue is due to camber.  More likely your car "turns better" due to being "toed-out" up front, not because of increased negative camber.

So you have almost 1/4" toe-out in the front.  Yep that will eat the inner edges of the tires very quickly.  We run zero toe on our car and the tires wore pretty even.

We've always run 14" "turbina" alloys on our Alfa. They are light, strong, and most importantly--tires are cheap. We're pretty much limited to the 195/60-14 Falken Azenis, but that seems to work well with the car.

I think the BMW bottlecap is a similar equivalent--tough, plentiful, and they keep tires cheap.

Personally, I'd go with the smallest wheel that clears your brakes and gives you a reliable and inexpensive list of tire options.

Yo dawg, I heard you ... oh, nevermind

On that note, I'd be curious to see what E30 guys are doing for cheap up-size wheels. I'm not aware of any 15" or 16" OEM wheels (that could be found at a junkyard) that will fit the E30 without spacers, and good spacers are about $150 a set. Even so, most OEM wheels in that lug pattern (4x100) are only 6" wide, which defeats the purpose of going upsize.

I have seen several E30 teams running the $99/each "TR" wheels, but I like to bring at least 2 sets of wheels/tires with me and I'm not sure I want to spend $800 on wheels alone.

GM Dustbuster minivan wheels FTW!

The Cavalier got upgraded to 15" wheels (snip long story about rear wheels falling off...) and we found 8 15x6.5 GM 'Large FWD' wheels at a junkyard for $175.

Steel wheels seem like a good choice, they bend a lot more before breaking.

I'm eternally happy racing a 80s GM crapbox- all the parts are super cheap and plentiful, and with some good research you can do upgrades on the cheap.
$50 a corner for way bigger brakes and beefier hubs, thanks to Pick 'n Pull...