Region: NASA-SoCal
Car #: 23
Year : 1995 Posts: 912
Status: Offline
posted
Only flat black? It hides the brake dust, but looks like hell on most cars that have nice bright paint schemes.
I also like that the picture shows a 5 lug wheel.
-------------------- Rob Gibson RJ Racing 2010 NASA Nationals TTE Champion 2008/2009 WERC Champion 2007 NASA SoCal SM Champion rjracing.net Weekend-Racer.com
Region: NASA-SoCal
Car #: 23
Year : 1995 Posts: 912
Status: Offline
posted
quote:Originally posted by Sphinx: Can anyone compare/contrast this one and the Iron Canyon Motorsports one on their performance?
I personally haven't used either of them, but just by looking at the two, it seems like the ICM wheel has a shot at better performance from a Moment of Inertia standpoint. I say this because the Mazda wheel has holes drilled in the hub portion of the wheel (most likely to make the weight 13 lbs). Removing weight from this area will certainly reduce the total weight, but it should be a last resort because of MOI. The edges of the wheel would be a better place to remove weight--but of course it's pretty much impossible to remove weight at the edges of a wheel that's already made, so where do they remove weight? The hub.
The same is true for flywheels, clutches, cars, etc. Weight removed from the edges is almost ALWAYS going to give a bigger performance gain than removing weight from the center. This is probably why the rules say that the minimum weight of the wheel must be 13 lbs without spacers. If you included the weight of the spacer in the minimum weight, people would be buying 9 lbs wheels and putting 4 lb spacers on.
-------------------- Rob Gibson RJ Racing 2010 NASA Nationals TTE Champion 2008/2009 WERC Champion 2007 NASA SoCal SM Champion rjracing.net Weekend-Racer.com
Region: WDCR
Car #: 36
Year : 2000 Posts: 351
Status: Offline
posted
I've had a set of these wheels for 2 years now and can vouch for their durability, looks, and ease of cleaning. IMO, they are much better than the Kazeras. Mine are bronze and they make silver, so I would expect other color options in the future. Hopefully the price will come down some. I paid $125 for mine.
Unfortunately 949 Racing decided to discontinue the SM wheel for the time being. Just not enough volume in the SM wheel market given the manufacturing costs of the 6UL.
Region: SC region and buccaneer
Year : 1991 Posts: 184
Status: Offline
posted
quote:Originally posted by Gibscreen:
quote:Originally posted by Sphinx: Can anyone compare/contrast this one and the Iron Canyon Motorsports one on their performance?
I personally haven't used either of them, but just by looking at the two, it seems like the ICM wheel has a shot at better performance from a Moment of Inertia standpoint. I say this because the Mazda wheel has holes drilled in the hub portion of the wheel (most likely to make the weight 13 lbs). Removing weight from this area will certainly reduce the total weight, but it should be a last resort because of MOI. The edges of the wheel would be a better place to remove weight--but of course it's pretty much impossible to remove weight at the edges of a wheel that's already made, so where do they remove weight? The hub.
The same is true for flywheels, clutches, cars, etc. Weight removed from the edges is almost ALWAYS going to give a bigger performance gain than removing weight from the center. This is probably why the rules say that the minimum weight of the wheel must be 13 lbs without spacers. If you included the weight of the spacer in the minimum weight, people would be buying 9 lbs wheels and putting 4 lb spacers on.
from my experience, lighter wheels only add a negligible amount of performance in these cars. maybe at a track like daytona or lowes they would make a noticeable difference
Neither here nor there now but I'll add that when we were looking at producing the SM wheel we looked at many of the wheels in the market at the time. Most all claimed to be 13 lbs. Rota RB's were an exception - we knew those were heavy. When we weighed samples of the rest and found some were between 13.4 and 14.8 lbs. Most of our samples were pretty old so things may have improved since then. The 949 wheels were built to strict weight tolerances, I think 13.1 lbs max. And yes, we did get a some weight out of the edge of the rim and had to add weight back to the hub to stay at 13 lbs. It was actually kind of hard to make the wheel get up to 13 lbs as the original 949 Racing tooling was built to produce a wheel that was much lighter. Weigh your wheels people. You might be surprised at what you find. The 949's are available as street/track wheels. For the price (and maybe at any price) you will find none better for your Miata.