Lightest Rims

[Silente]

Hi,

i need an advice in order to choose a set of 13" rims, 6.2 wide at the front and 7.2 at the rear.

We are looking for the lightest rims on the market.

Does anybody know which manifacturer produce the lightest rims with these features and what is their wheight more or less?

Thank you!

[jm1495]

Have you tried calling the manufacture's of the rims? I'm guessing that would be a better source of information than the forum.

[MalcolmG]

and are you sure that lightness is the only criteria you want to assess for deciding on rims?

[Silente]

for now we want to check for the lightest, then we are going to analyze between the lower weight rims which one will meet our needs better...

Do you have any advice?

[TorqueWrench]

I'm going to second Malcolm on this one.

I would advise looking at what loads you are putting on the wheels and what deflection this would cause in the wheel. From what little I know of suspension, deflection in wheels is normally something that wants to be avoided.

To start off, I would e-mail Keizer Wheels and ask them for some data. They have always been willing to work with us in the past.

[MalcolmG]

Well we once had some nice light spun aluminium rims with cast wheel centers. They were very light, but they flexed enough to cause the wheel to touch the brake caliper, which as you can imagine was not an ideal situation! Additionally, wheel flex is typically a bad thing with respect to controlling your tyre camber. Whether 0.5 degrees of camber compliance * is worth a 1.3kg saving in unsprung mass* is entirely up to you to decide

I think if you search this forum you should find quite a bit of feedback on different wheels/rims that teams frequently use

* - these numbers are made up, just to illustrate a point

[exFSAE]

On these cars, I'd be much more interested in having a stiff wheel than worrying about unsprung mass. I'll take a pound per corner unsprung mass to get less toe and camber compliance.

[Pennyman]

COMPROMISE!!!

[Dennis Seichter]

Since you are from an italian team, I would start by calling OZ Racing, they are Italy-based. A lot of german teams (including us) run OZ rims. If I remember correctly they even make magnesium rims.

Still, in order to get really light wheels you probably have to think about carbon http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

[HoggyN]

A lot of the UK teams source their rims from here...

Barnby Engineering (http://www.mb-racingwheels.com/)

[Adambomb]

While we're shamelessly plugging local race wheel manufacturers... http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

Keizer (out of good 'ol Iowa) makes some very popular FSAE wheels. They are lovingly cold-spun on ancient machines by grizzly skilled craftsmen. The ones with the spun aluminum centers are very light but very flexy, we prefer the Mg centers.

[D Collins Jr]

As long as we're plugging anything...keep in mind that "you get what you pay for." If weight and/or cost are your only considerations, Keizer Wheels are great. If you're to the point of being concerned with wheel shell deflection or consistency between sets (and sometimes even within a set), then you may need to step up to a better wheel. Also keep in mind that as recently as '08, teams were caught switching from there homemade carbon fiber rims (with sidewall stiffener!) to aluminum or mag wheels for the events to reduce deflection on track. Moral of the story, there's other things to consider than just weight.

We use Keizer wheels, and have for a while. But it's hard around this time of year, when modeling things like wheels, because some years the shells weigh 6.5 lbs, some years 9 lbs, some years something else...