The 9's up front will put an even bigger grin on your face, as you fly around high speed turns quite a bit faster than M3's....Trust me on this.:biggrin5:
I trust you. But coming from a background of sliding the nights away on gravel roads I like a loose car. Back on topic.... You picked a fine time to leave me loose wheel. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0NDKtDSxKM]You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me Loose Wheel - YouTube[/ame]
So i talked to the guys at jongbloed and they make quite a few one piece 15" wheels 15x7/8/9/10 so I don't have to spring for 3 piece customs or volks to get top end wheels. Their standard offsets aren't ideal but the guy i talked to said they are happy to make some other offset ones and the prices were way lower than i thought. I am taking some caliper measurements and if it pans out i will get their spec miata wheel in 15x7 (street/rain with 205s) and their porsche wheel in 15x9/8 (dry with 225s). They won't be the lightest due to spec miata min weight etc but as I learnt the hard way strength > weight savings on wheels!
Talk about a blast from the past wheel maker. I didn't even know Jongbloed was still around. Back in the 80's, in another life, when I worked a tire shop we put a set of Jongbloed Wheels on a Pantera GTS.
Yeah I hadn't heard much about them but they got mentioned alongside Kodiak as top end racing wheels. Their 3-piece ones are as much as you would expect but unlike lots of the other competitors in that space they had a bunch of affordable one piece wheels too! Did some research and found they are pretty popular in a lot of racing series.
Just throwing out an update as I heard back from Enkei after a few emails and they paid to have the wheel shipped to them: "We did receive the wheel and have looked at it. In our inspection, we could not conclude that there is any manufacturing defect. We are sending the wheel to our factory in Japan. Because of that, we feel that we need to replace the wheel to be fair to you in this case, even though the wheel was used on the track and is therefore not covered by warranty." Better than the "screw you track use isn't warrantied" they could have come back with.
I'm kinda reading out of this... We've seen your posts on the interwebz and figure it's better to just eat the cost of the wheel than be forever vilified even though we don't think it is our fault.
That's all probably true, and it's smart. If more vendors did that it would save them and their customers many a headache.
Yeah I was assuming I was going to have to eat the cost of everything 8 new wheels, new brake rotor, ball joints, fire damage etc due to the warranty wording, but at least this way I have a full set to sell instead of 3. Will probably have to go below market though cuz of the history :-/ If I had bought cheap-o knock off wheels and been running them for 3+ years I would have had only myself to blame but I figured they might also be surprised at how quickly it gave up and it was worth contacting them even though the warranty excludes track use. For me (not saying other people have to do the same) I think street tires + cast wheels are probably fine but I know I won’t be running r-comps on cast wheels anymore, expensive lesson but yay for missing the wall. I didn't mean to sound "bashy" if I did, this thread was more about finding a better replacement.
+1 No bashing sounds other than your rotor hitting the track. I'm very glad Enkei is giving you a wheel. Smart of them to keep the wheel that failed so they can do a complete inspection.
Can't believe I missed this. Good thing you're still here with us. I would be furious with Enkei. This is unacceptable. It's one thing to crack a rim on your own from curbing it but these are supposed to be performance wheels that should stand up to competition use and have a significant safety factor. Fail proof as they say! Just seeing this made me lose any confidence in the brand now :frown5: They should give you a whole new set of wheels. Whose to say the other three weren't from a bad batch? *Hugs*