HRE 445R's mounted on my SS Touring 6MT

Front: 18x8.5 with 2" lip, 245/40/18
Rear: 18x10 with 3" lip, 275/40/18

The obligatory shot of the loose wheels

 

Stack o' wheels & tires

 

side view

 

1/4 front view

 

3/4 rear view

 

close up of rear wheel

 

front view

 

rear view

 

Russ, you got my set up! I ordered 18: HRE 445 9" fts with 10" rears but I am planning on putting 265/35-18 toyo t1's on ft and 285/35-18 on rear. If I get brave, I might go 295/35-18 rears. I am getting Toyo t1's just like you!

Thanks for posting, now I know what they will look like on my SS 350Z! It looks like you got polished all over right? I ordered a brushed finish with polished lips.

How do you like them? You ordered from Avalon right? When did you get them, I have not got mine yet! My wait just got a little harder to handle.

PS: I hope you do not mind that I used your pic until I get my wheels?

Jeff

 

Yes, I meant to say the finish on both the center and lip are polished with clearcoat.

Ordered from Paul at Avalon on 1/4 (so order probably went to HRE on 1/6), wheels arrived on 2/6.

They look really nice. Too bad the weather was so cloudy when I took the pics. I've probably only driven 20 miles or so on them. Pretty much drove it home and parked it back in the garage.

No I don't mind if you use the pics, I've got higher res ones (1600x1200) if anyone's interested.

 

Russ,

The wheels look great - send me the pictures so we can add them to our customer page on the web site.

Enjoy.

 

Beautiful! And a great choice on sizes. The 18's look great IMO and you actually have enough rubber to protect your $$$wheels$$$ from pot-holes etc, and the 18's are lighter and don't make your stock brakes look excessively tiny like the 19"'s do. I don't know why so many people go with 19" over 18" when the 18's ride better, are lighter, and have better tire selections. Good job man!

 

Nice job Russ! Looks awesome. I ordered the same in the 19's and my garage looks like yours in the before pic. The idiots at the dealership "forgot" to order my car so now I'm sitting on the rims and tires waiting. Now that I see what they will look like I'm more excited than ever. Your car looks great, classy yet tough.
Congrats!

zhguitar

 

Oh yeah, did you have any problems with the tps and banding them with the stuff HRE sent ya?

 

I agree with Throbber. My choice will be 18's when I buy rims. Looks very smooth. One problem is that most of the rims that people are buying have spokes that do not extend the full diameter of the rim, thus making them look smaller. 18" is pretty damn large.

 

love the wheels ...

love the plates more

 

I did attempt to band the TPS's in the wheels, but in the end I wasn't convinced they were going to stay in place with the banding. So I opted not to put the TPS in the wheels. I didn't want to chance having a $250 sensor bouncing around inside the tire.

The only thing that shows up inside the car to indicate the sensors aren't working is dashes on the tire pressure display of the trip computer.

Here's a pic of the banding materials that HRE included. There's enough material for all four wheels. For each wheel there is a long stainless steel band with holes as you see, then a hose clamp type of unit that has grooved slots on each end such that the ends slip into the rectangular holes in the band.

 

Here's a shot of the sensor in stock wheel

 

Here's a shot with the sensor & stock valve stem sitting in the HRE wheel drop center. At least that's the orientation the instructions seemed to imply to me.

Note that the top side of the sensor is sloped, meaning the side view is more triangular shaped than the HRE figures indicate.

Note also that the bottom side of the sensor doesn't sit flat in the drop center. The angle between the valve stem and the sensor seems to be greater than the instructions indicate, so there is also a large gap underneath the sensor.

 

Guess the gap underneath is kind of hard to see at that resolution.

So we looked at a couple locations for placing the band.

One with the band over the top of the sensor, but that didn't look good to me. Due to the slope on the top side, it looked to me like the band could easily slip off the sensor.