Custom Tire Selection - Style

Rick Robinson: Hi! I'm Rick from Springfield Motorsport and we're here today to talk about selection of custom wheels and tyres for your car. In this segment, we're going to talk about the various styles of wheels that are available and the parameters that you need to consider when you select a wheel for your car.

What I've got here is one of the original wheels from the 90s, early 90s vintage Mustangs. It's not as plain as to some of the wheels production cars, but not as fancy is what you see in the custom wheel market today either.

Now one of the first things you need to consider when you select your wheel and your tyre is, how you're going to use the car. Is this car going to be daily driver where you have to consider durability of both the wheel and the tyre? Is going to be primarily a show car where maximum bling is the goal that you're looking for?

Or is performance on the dragstrip the most important factor to you? All of these things have to be taken into consideration as you pick out the proper wheel/tyre combination for your vehicle.

Now in making that choice, one of the most important factors is the sidewall of the tyre. The height of the sidewall determines several things. One is how much impact the tyre can take on the road. So if this is your daily driver, you want a tyre that's going to be able of absorb shock from potholes and bumps on the road and so forth and is going to give you fairly comfortable ride as you're driving this car around all the time. If this car is going to be primarily a show car, that's not as much of the consideration and style and today the style leans towards large wheels, narrow sidewalls, is going to be more important to you. In drag racing again that sidewall height is critical. If you look at the videos from drag racers as they launch from the lights, you'll notice that the sidewall of the tyre wrinkles up as the torque of the axle is applied to the wheel. That twisting and wrinkling of the tyre allows the tyre to maintain its grip on the pavement as the car accelerates. If you've got a large diameter wheel with a very narrow stiff sidewall, it's not going to do that, tyres going to break loose and spin.

Probably the next thing you're going to a consider is the style of the wheel itself. As I said, this is an early 90s vintage Mustang wheel, not bad looking in its own right, but there are many other wheels that have much better styling to them. Here we have one of the popular aftermarket wheels in the Mustang market. This particular wheel is originally designed by Saleen for the Saleen Mustangs. It's one of the standard in five-spoke designs that are very popular. This particular one is I wants power coated white, so it's going to have match the accessories of your car and blend well with the styling of your car. There are other of course colors available black, gray, and so forth to fit better with your particular car.

Here we have an excellent example of the some of the latest styling in the wheel market. This particular wheel was designed and built by Carroll Shelby Wheels. It's in 20 Inch diameter rim, and you'll notice again the factor that we talked about before, the sidewall of the tyres itself in order for the wheel to be in the proper diameter for the car, the sidewall of course has to be much narrower to go with this 20 Inch wheel and of course is going to affect the performance of the tyre on the street, but it looks great.

Coming up in the next segment, we're going to talk about specific size parameters that you need to take into consideration when choosing that right wheel for your car.