355 18" Wheels for F355

There's a guy in the UK who had them make some 355 Challenge replicas which looked well-made (although they didn't have enough dish) and posted some pics on Facebook. I was in contact with the company for a while about their standard 355 wheel replicas but I had to try very hard to get them to send me a pic of their reps on a 355 - they're close, but they don't look right. They can't get the same level of curvature on the face of the wheel with spin forging as you can with casting.
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Billet wheels will never, ever, have the character and the dimensionality of a cast wheel. Also, like you said, the profile of the forging blanks today are either too concave or two convex.

 

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Sorry, these don’t change my mind. They’re nice, but they still look CNC’d. I too have had Agument Wheels made. Two sets in fact. I wasn’t satisfied with either. As hard as I tried to get them to look period correct, you could see from a mile away that they were billet.

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I think you've just proven his point. They're a nice design but they're very obviously milled from a blank and therefore lack curves.

 

Cast wheels are also thicker. Chunkier. Look at these two side-by-side. The real and the memorex. The billet is just a facade. One dimensional.

I knew I was going down the wrong path when a guy who knew nothing about 348s said he liked my “vintage looking” wheels.


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The fact that those (both sets) of wheels are milled are the least of their problems.

"Thicker and chunkier" can be a bug or a feature and isn't specific to the method of fabrication.

If you're saying that you prefer a less precise wheel design, you're certainly entitled to that opinion. That said, you could easily reproduce the "chunkier" spoke style and less accurate reliefs in either the 348 or 355 wheel in a milled design.

 

Don’t get butt hurt. Keep it civil. I was polite to you.

 

Not being uncivil or upset—just saying the milled wheels you posted could better capture the spirit of the originals. More refined relief detail would improve the design, and modern CNC tech is fully capable of achieving that organic look.

 

Welp, that may be so. Not my field. I just know after $9k to Dan this was the best he could do after weeks of discussion. Anyway, I’ve sold them both.

 

Why can't I find a custom wheel manufacturer who can do it? I'm based in the UK which is full of men in sheds producing niche aftermarket car parts. Nobody I've contacted can do exact 355 challenge replicas.

 

It may be theoretically possible on a CNC, but almost everyone is at the mercy of the blanks on the market — I think HRE makes their own blanks - and the center of the blanks is only so thick.

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They can be made to look however you want. Doesn't have to be a blank as above, commonly it's a cnc machined wheel face and the back half of the rim welded onto it.

I think ff2kracer's wheels look great. Can't see how that's lacking curvature or looking flat in any way.

 

With all due respect, I don’t think you have any clue what you’re talking about.

 

ff2kracer's wheels look so good in person. No idea why anybody would think otherwise. Other than internet trolling without seeing them in the real world

 

There is no shape limitation to machining a wheel, lmao. Try again.

 

Of course there is. Don’t be ridiculous.

Look at these two wheels from Image — long time custom wheel maker in the uk —.

Two from their cast line two from their billet line. You can see the difference from space.

Cast

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Billet

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You're literally making me lmao. Just because one company makes wheels that look like they're from 1974 means you can't machine aluminum into any shape you want?

You can get aluminum blank billets in any size and depth you can afford and machine to any shape you can imagine. What exactly is the limitation?

I've had EVOD and Curtis Speed make me wheels.

Do these look like the centers are machined from a one or 2 inch thick blank as you posted above?

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Fair enough. Those are pretty convincing. Ngl.

 

They -can- be made to look cast, it's just a lot more money. The EVOD wheels I had made were 13k and that was 12 years ago so who knows what they are now.

Sure it's popular to use a thin blank because of cost but more is possible for sure.

 

Well there ya go. I’ve had a lot of wheels made over the last 25 years. Some with cast centers, some with billet, but I don’t think I’ve ever paid over $1500/wheel. Even the HRE blanks are pretty thin. So yeah, sure, anything is possible with enough $$$. I’ll give you that.

 

That's about what my Charger wheels cost but we're back to blanks that didn't require a lot of thickness to achieve the design.

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So, I’m not sure what we’re learned here? I think it’s: you need to pay 2x as much as original Speedlines for an accurate set of replicas.

 

Maybe in 1980, with 1970s build techniques. But $1500 a custom wheel these days with modern construction is hilarious. You must still be living in the eightys

 

Do you even know what a set of original speedlines go for these days? You should try and find a set, then ad the cost of refinishing them.