Recently i made a 3 and half hour drive to Pittsburgh to purchase a set of wheels i had found while looking for my new girlfriend on craigslist, but instead of finding the fat girl of my dreams i found a set of 18" VOLK GT-N's for 900$, My jaw nearly went through the floor boards when i saw the pricetag, for mearly a set and a half of fake wheels i could have the real deal. Ofcourse i expected them to be somewhat "thrashed" , come on, 900$ VOLKs? Get real, show me the curbage, but to my suprise upon arriving at the workplace of the previous owner's , i opened the box's to find this. . .



complete with VOLK center caps, and rays engineering valve stems and caps. Picture shown is of the rear wheel with a 3 inch lip.

As flawless as they appear to be, the stamp on the inside of the indicates that they were manufactured in 2002, so naturally with age, the gold paint on the centers of the 2 piece wheels had faded almost to a silver or chrome as they appear to be in the picture, unlike the vibrant gold of newer GT-N's and volk wheels, the other side of the wheel would show the rich gold that the fronts use to be prior to the suns abuse, after i got home from the lengthy drive i was on a mission to restore this beloved Japanese racing wheel to its former glory. First that ment the long, agonizing process of separating a 2 piece wheel.






After that i needed to make a vital decision of what color to paint the wheels, i couldnt decide whether i wanted to try and match the VOLK's factory gold, or to try something radical. Of course more times than not, radical won out over the stock gold idea and i ended up with. .


Nissan's Orange Mist Metallic.

So then a little of this had to happen, From primer, to base coat, to clear.










Then finally the finished product laid back in the wheel to get a feel for how they will look.







Of course in the process of sanding down the wheels for paint the original weathered VOLK decals were scratched off. So i ordered new ones from:

http://healthewheelsfoundation.org/

Which appears to be a pretty legit website with a dedication to restoring VOLK Wheels, many times on the website they promise "Better than factory quality" on there vinyls. I received them today. .



I paid 22$ for these "replica" vinyls , and i have to say im not impressed, although the website shows a real passion for restoring VOLK wheels to factory quality, the decals i received couldnt be any farther from that truth, They appear to be hand cut, and each sticker differs from another, the decal self has the same sticker quality as a children's coloring book activity pack. II threw them on the wheels despite my uneasy feeling , just to make sure i wasnt seeing things.



and i wasn't. . .

sorry healthewheels but you get the f*cking thumbs down. These things are pretty much crap, and rather rock my VOLKs without stickers versus these things any day. Next time i have a spare 22$ setting around ill spending it on a cheap prostitutes, you know, with crabs and such...

Anyway i have to run to the autopaint store and get the rest of the orange to finish the wheels, ill be sure to post them as soon as i get them on the car, on my build thread which can be found here:

https://my350z.com/forum/new-owners/...ml#post9050870

 

The price seems realistic honestly...a lot of people TRY to sell their 18's for way to f*ckin much on these forums. They try to get the price of 19"s all the time.
Gt-Ns I believe are an older style of Volks(CE28's prior gen.) and the rim size and offset may have something to do with the price as well...what are the widths and offsets anyways? Im guessing 8.5 +28
front and 9.5 +27 rear..something around there.

Im biased since I had gold sf challenges but I sure wish you woulda kept them the original color. Blue and gold is pretty flashy and rare to begin with.

In for install pics for sure though.

 

Why that copper/orangish color?

 

no matter the wheel manufacturer....poor offsets and widths will kill it.

 

I know this is going to sound like me being an As$hole but... you rattle canned a set of perfectly fine wheels?

 

congrats on the new wheels. I personally would have bought some used Enkei RPF1 or Work XD9 for that $900. Im sure the fitment on those wont be too good on the Z

 

he did a good job with the rattle can...but i would have left them alone myself. They didnt look bad with the original finish. looks better than it does now imo

 

He did an amazing job actually but I've got several wheels refinished over the years and quality paint goes a LOOOONG way in refinishing wheels, not to mention he did this by hand. In my eyes he's taking the time to do it right... Without doing it right(if that makes any sense. )

 

cool project dude... way to go for it.

 

+1

He did it right...for right now.

 

looks good, can't wait to see it mounted

 

I actually really like the color,and the finish looks nice

 

+1! They look good, I can't wait to see them on the car!

 

nice... just my personal preference to have tried to match volk gold because i think its pretty hard for a stock body z to pull off orange and blue.

 

That looks like the color of brembo calipers. I'm interested to see what the wheels look like on the car. Kudos for trying something different.

 

those front offsets look... off.

i like the attention to detal and overall look.

personally i'd prefer to spend a few extra bucks and get exactly what i want.

 

The new shoes are laced up! Come see the other pictures on my build thread, HERE

 

i really like them man

how big are the lips ? 2" F & 3" R

what are the offsets

 

I like the orange color, just not on the blue. Looks pretty good to me