I personally dont care what brand of wheels anyone gets, as long as it has good offset, drop nicely and clean design its all GOOD. For people who spend thousands of dollars on bodykits, brand wheels and other lame accs and nothing to show under the hood is lame. Most of the SUVs now can accelarate better than N/A Z's Now if you have clean bodykit and not overdone, brand name wheels and forced induction under the hood then I'll give you props. Just my .2 cents

 

i agree...

 

ouch!@

 

I really don't see where you get this conclusion, do you see others bashing Works, Weds, SSR, Racing Harts, Advan & Enkei??

Only bash those who copy someone else's exact design and pass as there own, and say they are the have the same strength, rigidity and lightness. But ending up FAILED!

 

It was a generalizing statement and was not meant to be taken as strictly literal...

What percentage of Rota wheels that are manufactured do you think end up failing? Of those failures, what percentage do you think are these "catastrophic failure" scenarios that Rota haters love to throw around (ie., wheel barrel seperates from spoke section upon rolling over a single grain of sand at 100mph on the freeway, resulting in a firey 73 car pileup and civil war level casualties)

?

 

35% is just a good guestimate from being involved in racing.

They may give Koni Challenge teams RPF01 wheels, but they also gave Formula 1 drivers Michelins which if you remember correctly they refused to drive on for safety issues. Just the fact that so many Grand Am cars are using these wheels with no apparent failures is reason enough to use a cast wheel.

I have seen kenisis wheels crack (forged), HRE wheels crack (forged), SSR whesl crack (forged) etc. Forged doesn't necessarily mean stregnth. Wheel manufacturers often take the weight advantage than the stregnth advantage. They make the wheels lighter not stronger.

Why does F1 use forged wheels exclusively? Because F1 whels are magnesium wheels and cast magnesium cannot even compete in stregnth to cast aluminum let alone forged aluminum.

 

Anything thats massed produced isn't gonna have a 100% success rate. People always focus on the negative. So theres a reported case of one Rota wheel failing so what about all of the people who ride of Rotas everyday with no problems? One wheel out of thousands fails now Rota is a bad manufacturer. If thats the case the 350Z is a terrible car because some had tire feathering, bad window motors, bad trannys on the 6MT, etc. Saying Volk or nothing is like saying Farrari or nothing. And just because a wheel is priced inexpensively doesn't mean it's cheap in quality. If Volk sold their rims at the same price as Rota would your view of Volks change? Like I said before I'm not taking sides, I don't have Rotas or Volks but completely bashing Rota because one person cracked one is ridiculous.

 

Do you really want something like that to happen?

35% huh.. Do you know that in Super GT and Formula One that their wheels are Forged Magnesium, I don't think you can make CAST magnesium due its material to catch on fires.

-- FYI Enkei's F1 wheel on Mclaren's car are design by Enkei but made by another "forged" company, along with many of their "racing" wheels.

Koni Challange or Gram Am series, no one said a cast wheels are bad but if my team is on a budget anything I can get for free why would I say no? Plus if they are willing to support me with parts and money I don't think anyone out there would say "no". The Team that have the big budget can pick and buy what they think can give them a 10th of a second or better then their rival.

-- Team that are running BBS & Rays buy their wheels (super gt & formula 1)

-- btw if you are so into comparing race to street wheels then why not start using "steel" wheels for street. That all NASCAR are using right?

There are difference between Forged Wheels and those "Forged" Block that are CNC out to become a wheel. If forged is about the same a cast why would "advan" request Rays to make them a Forged wheels for their new lightup?

Not sure if you are doing your research before you reply. There are so many different way to make a cast and forged a wheel good. Its just come down to on if you want to cut corner, copy design, use cheap material etc.

-- For the last time, I don't think anyone are saying CAST wheels are bad. Its just that company that copy a wheel design and making it their own with out testing is just dumb.

 

Couldn't have said it better myself.

 

3 wheel it jon

 

Of course not, I think you were missing the point of my post.

I was trying to express that I believe running Rota wheels, while they may be marginally more likely to fail then other higher end brands of wheels, does not pose an unacceptable risk by any measure.

It honestly seems like some people on here think that a large proportion of Rota wheels fail. My assumption (based only on the relatively few cases of Rota failure I've seen posted about, and the relatively large number of Rotas that are sold/installed), is that the actual rate of failure is probably a fraction of a percent. Logically, the rate of catastrophic failure would be only a smaller fraction of that fraction.

 

I agree, it's a very low percentage from everything I've seen and I've seen just as many threads regarding f'd up Volks. Yes, Volks are great, but they aren't the only wheel out there than can have tires mounted and support a car through everyday driving/track events.

 

Yeah, never mind the cornering stress of 60-100+ mph turns, hard acceleration, etc. on the track. That's no stress to the wheel at all.

 

lol at the volk kids

 

rota ftl

 

My vote for worst roads on the planet goes to MA.

 

Its probably best you don't think then. Early VW engine cases are cast Mag. , most Dirt and street bikes have cast mag. case covers and other various cast mag. parts on them.

For the person saying that they last on the track cause of the smooth surfaces. I take it you havn't hit a rumble strip at speed yet have you. Do you have any idea about the cornering load on the track , how about with slicks, Oh and the temps the wheel see's from the brakes. The track puts a lot more stress on a wheel.

 

You people amaze me. Who really gives a ****.

Rota Wheels

Pros-inexpensive, look nice, and offer pretty good quality
Cons-knockoff wheels that don't always offer the best offset

So the guy cracked a wheel. That blows. Almost every other wheel company in the world suffers the same fate at one point or another. The difference is when a rota owner has an issue with a wheel it's only going to cost them peanuts to replace it, not to mention the wait time should be less than 2 weeks. Can you say the same for some of the other "high quality" brands?

With that said, I would much rather have a set of advans/volks/etc. but that doesn't mean I don't back rota.

As a Z community you shouldn't be hating on what brand a particular wheel manufacturer is, rather the style/offset. I'm all for flaming a dude with chrome 20's and a +40 offset.

 

A track car is stressed way more than a daily driven street car. Take for example the GST Motorsports Impreza, it's a very light weight car that makes 500whp+. The car runs on competition tires and is accelerating very hard, braking extremely hard, and taking turns very fast. The amount of force put on the car and wheels in tremendous for a car like this. Also the car goes over berms at very high speeds which is not easy on the car/wheels.

-Dan

 

Also after looking at the top left picture posted in the first thread, it is very obvious this tire had extremely low tire pressure or was almost flat for some time. There is a dark mark that goes around the entire center of the tire which is a result from extreme sidewall stress, the cause of this stress is low tire pressure. The only protection a wheel has is the tire and when there isn't a cushion of air.. you get the picture

-Dan