I realized no tire place is going to have this in stock if I need one, so I bought an extra tire to throw in the trunk as a spare. This way if I have a flat I can at least get going the next day. I purchased my BBS CX-R in 19x8.5 wrapped in the tires, so I couldn’t weigh them separately. Now I have the data.
http://i58.tinypic.com/2ir3okz.jpg
http://i62.tinypic.com/2i8j28j.jpg
Total weight of rim and tire isn’t the best but 21 for a 9 inch tire isn’t a bad weight.
Why are the scales different?
The second one looks like.one of those hanging ones used to weigh fish
24 lbs per wheel doesn’t sound good. The scales are most likely different cause he took the total weight at his shop while mounting + balancing, tire weight at home (my guess).
Different scales, different days, different magnetic pull of the earth’s core. We’ll never know how many grams that wheel is.
These wheels are cheap and strong. Most wheels people buy are cheap and light. When I say “cheap” I mean less than $1500 per wheel.
There are plenty of flow formed wheels that are cheap, lights, and strong.
Cheap, light or strong. Pick 2. If you want light and strong you have to go forged and source a top quality aluminum alloy from a reputable foundry like Alcoa. Each foundry has their own formula and you get what you pay for (price can vary by double if you don’t want lead in it, for instance). The tooling for forged wheels is super expensive and the CNC process is time consuming, so throughput it low ($$$). Some wheel designs are in the machine for 22 hours and it’s a multimillion dollar machine, and you need 4 of them.
I have the HRE FF01 on the Boxster in Flow Formed, which is made in Japan like the BBS above. They’re 25 pounds for a 20x10. Sure, you could machine them down to 21 pounds to pose as a forged wheel but then they’d be cheap and light instead of cheap and strong. It’s zero sum. I define strong as “static load rating in excess of 700 kg”. Only the best forged wheels are 700kg. The flow formed are 750kg, which is why I prefer them.
delete
So you think all those people running track setups with TSW nurburgrings or Enkei RPF1’s or OZ racing Ultraleggera HLT are just running “light and cheap” wheels according to the westwest school of metallurgy?
I have no idea. I’ve only done research on the stuff I bought, and I have good assurance. Short of buying a bunch of wheels and cracking them in a 5 ton press we’ll never know. Japan is obsessive about pushing the envelope on quality (improving something that’s already amazing) and I believe the flow formed factory they’re running is world class. Which is why I bought almost $6000 worth of wheels from them this year, under two labels (HRE and BBS).
under 25 lbs isn’t bad.
30 lbs is bad
20 lbs is amazing, but is rare without breaking the bank
THe other factor is looks. Sure you could get some ugly Enkei’s that weigh nothing, but then you’d have an ugly car. That’s hardly a good tradeoff. Aesthetics are key on a car like this…you can’t throw it out the window to save 16 lbs of rotating mass.
Recently I was driving from Indianapolis to Kentucky to go to the bourbon trail and I saw an Enkei factory. Would have loved to stop and take a tour. I didn’t realize their US presence. Do you know where the Enkei wheels you mentioned are sourced from, or anything about them?
HRE are the best looking wheels by far. BBS always looks great on a German sports sedan. Most people think I’m running OEM, which is what I wanted. On the Boxster, not so much (attention whore):
My wheels are approximately 22lbs and look pretty good IMO. They were not very expensive either, even with a custom powdercoat. Now that flow forming is becoming more popular, there should be some more attractive lightweight options at a lower cost than those HREs.
You want to have an idea of how suitable a wheel is for track use, check the load rating for the JWL test.
These are always in KG.
To give you an idea, OEM for cars is usually in the 700s. Sometimes more (for our cars).
However, you’ll find that even more expensive rotary forged wheels (nurburgring, some enkei’s) are under 700kg load rating.
So essentially, anyone rocking those has opted for lighter weight at the expense of strength. For track use, it’s a personal choice, but I would not make that decision. I’ve seen a number of wheels shatter on just lapping days to scare me away from that sort of thing 
These ratings are based on standard industry wide tests. JWL is known to be one of the most strenious of all.
There is this really lame video that covers some of JWL testing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJeFB6SRslk
Volks/Rays racing has their own version of testing, exceeding all JWL standard requirements called JWL-R.
+1. There are quite a few options out there now. For that same size wheel you could have got the renn Motorsport rs-51 at 20 lbs per wheel dropping another 4 lbs per corner and saving $4500 in the process
Yeah I don’t think those were made in Japan, at $300 a wheel. I’d guess Taiwan, which is a fancy way of saying China.
A 255 Pilot Super Sport is 24.5 pounds. Paying an extra $400 for the tires is cheaper than paying an extra $4000 for forged wheels, in my calculus.
yes, but crashing whenever it rains is more expensive than both
I’ll track them in the rain and let you know. If they’re anything like PSS it’ll be fine.