488 - Carbon Wheels Pista | FerrariChat

488 Carbon Wheels Pista

Discussion in '458 Italia/488/F8' started by islandtrader, Nov 30, 2019.

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  1. islandtrader

    islandtrader Formula Junior

    Jun 30, 2013
    369
    I got these on my Pista but it does not seem like a popular option? Anyone have pics with theirs? I feel like my pista will be ultra rare beast haha!
     
  2. Elisesko

    Elisesko Karting
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    Jan 27, 2016
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    For a while there in the middle of the spec process it was unknown how long one would have to wait to get them. Pretty popular to get on the Piloti it seems from the pictures I've seen. Obviously not sure of ultimate numbers breakdown across the board.
    Image Unavailable, Please Login
     
  3. Elisesko

    Elisesko Karting
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    Jan 27, 2016
    210
    Dealer pic. Not the best quality. Sorry.
     
  4. islandtrader

    islandtrader Formula Junior

    Jun 30, 2013
    369
    Right, I ordered my pista in August 2018, just going into production now. Wondering if I was delayed for the flipping wheels.


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  5. SoCal to az

    SoCal to az F1 World Champ
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    Nov 25, 2012
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    I did not order them on my Pista for several reasons

    1- there was talk the car would Be delayed and I didn’t want to take the chance.

    2- if you move or damage one rim, word on the street is Ferrari makes you replace all 4

    3- I’m a cheap bastard and couldn’t justify the 25k cost of them.

    Having said that- they look super cool. Congrats on yours.
     
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  6. islandtrader

    islandtrader Formula Junior

    Jun 30, 2013
    369
    I agree on all 3 points. I got delayed, not sure how I’m going to drive this thing, and I’m not sure why I spent 25k for them.

    All in all they will be cool and unique.


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  7. Carrerarsr

    Carrerarsr Formula Junior

    Sep 29, 2014
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    Frank
    Read the manual how you have to treat the wheels. Did not like like that !
     
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  8. Gh21631

    Gh21631 F1 Veteran
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    Feb 24, 2011
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    I have them but also had a set of Forgelines custom made. PM me if you are interested int the details. I also have thread here with pics of both.
     
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  9. Gh21631

    Gh21631 F1 Veteran
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  10. buddyg

    buddyg F1 Veteran
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    Sep 20, 2004
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    Sweet wheels but God help me if I scratched one!
     
  11. RayJohns

    RayJohns F1 Veteran
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    May 21, 2006
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    #11 RayJohns, Dec 2, 2019
    Last edited: Dec 2, 2019
    Haha.. right? Curbing one of those is the stuff of nightmares all right.

    Carbon fiber is pretty forgiving in general - unless you push it too far and shatter it. One reason to get matte finish is because you can sand it out and buff it to some degree. The clear gel coat is a bit more touchy though.

    I had custom matte finish carbon fiber BST wheels from South Africa on my Yamaha R1 motorcycle. I couldn't bring myself to pay list price (nearly $5000 for the pair). I ended up waiting until the company offered a set of "not perfect" wheels for less money. They were still perfect though. Whatever caused them to reject the wheels, I couldn't find it. They claimed there was a slight deviation in the carbon weave, but you'd need a microscope to see it. Structurally, they were 100%.

    When they finally arrived from South Africa, I was kind of shocked. They were much more durable than I had imagined. Also, while I was waiting for them to arrive, I happened to swing by Laguna Seca for MotoGP. One of the companies that was a distributor for them was doing a demonstration where they took a carbon fiber wheel and bounced it on the concrete from about 6 feet in the air and then caught it. They spent all day doing that demo. Didn't affect the rim at all. I went over and spoke to the guy and he said they do it every event, same rim, weekend after weekend, zero damage to the wheel. So that made me feel better.

    Nevertheless, I was a nervous wreck when it came to the idea of someone installing tires on my wheels. In the end, I decided to just manufacture my own wheel / tire mounting jig. I welded it up and bolted it down to the trailer hitch on my SUV. Then I made a sort of ball bearing affair that locked the tire installation bar into place in such a way to where nothing could actually make contact with the lip of the carbon fiber rim. Even with all this, plus a lot of tire installation lube, it was still a nerve-racking job to put on and take off tires.

    The great things about CF wheels is the MOI. It's not just the overall weight of the assembly, but more where the weight is relative to the axis of rotation. Further out, I think the formula involves the square of the distance or something.. whatever the math is, the closer the weight is to the axis of rotation, the better. Where CF rims excel is their light weight on the outer edge of rim of the wheel, as opposed to alloy wheels.

    Anyway, $25K or not, I think it's a nice option - especially for a street car. Just be careful of deep pot holes. With that said, going over bumps with CF wheels is a thing of beauty. It feels like someone has put pillows under your wheels - as compared to normal rims. Very smooth (at least with regard to a motorcycle).

    Ray
     
  12. s313

    s313 Rookie

    Oct 9, 2015
    29
    I have the carbon rims on my car, and selected them since I'm interested in vehicle performance (track), as opposed to cosmetic enhancements.

    Performance aside, these rims are quite rare, due to manufacturer supply issues. This means, the day it's time to sell car, I'm confident these rims will be a key selling point / differentiator compared with other Pistas. Without a doubt. Also, which was totally unexpected, everyone that looks at the car gloats over the rims more than any other item; this is telling, for future resale as well.

    By the way, last week, the company which makes the rims, Carbon Revolution in Australia, went public on the ASX. Ticker symbol CBR. Perhaps the supply issues may be solved with this new infusion of cash. Quote: "The company aims to use most of the proceeds of the float to increase production levels at its Victorian plant." (source: https://www.afr.com/companies/transport/carbon-revolution-accelerates-toward-asx-listing-20191101-p536fc).
     
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  13. islandtrader

    islandtrader Formula Junior

    Jun 30, 2013
    369
    Hopefully this is the case for value. I have not seen one for sale with Carbon rims and they are extremely rare on the Pista. Like I said I almost speced the car 18 months ago and I am excited to finally get these rims.

    How do you like them on the road and in general? Worth the investment in in the end?
     
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  14. s313

    s313 Rookie

    Oct 9, 2015
    29
    Very satisfied with how the car drives in general, more difficult to pinpoint direct benefit derived from the carbon wheels. I drive CT-OFF, and definitely there is quite a bit of wheel spin if you hammer the throttle post-apex. Obviously this is probably due to the HP + tires (not R spec), but there must be a contribution from the lower weight / unsprung rotating mass of the rims. Acceleration in general is brutal, same theory, probably in some part due to the rims.

    I don't know the difference in "driving comfort level" of these rims compared with non-carbon rims, since I've never compared my car with another car equipped with the standard rims.

    Regarding scratches etc.: yes, you don't want to scratch these rims. I've driven the car around 1400 miles, mostly on track, and not a scratch to be seen. Then again, how would they scratch in the first place? Parking against a curb (not gonna happen!), or, a stone from another car passing by, what are the odds of that happening....? Potholes: to be avoided, like any rim really.

    Bonus: cleaning the rims is simple, because they are....glass.

    Downside: if you track the car, and there's rubber bits on track, the inside ceramic coating (white color) will get spotted from track rubber. Haven't figured out a way to clean that. Not too concerned about it, I personally don't care. It'll be a different story when the time comes to sell.

    Here's a pic of one of the rims: Image Unavailable, Please Login
     
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  15. RayJohns

    RayJohns F1 Veteran
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    May 21, 2006
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    Try gasoline and a microfiber cloth.

    Ray
     
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  16. s313

    s313 Rookie

    Oct 9, 2015
    29
    Good call - will try that out.
     
  17. Caeruleus11

    Caeruleus11 F1 World Champ
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    Jun 11, 2013
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    Or bug and tar remover
     
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  18. Gh21631

    Gh21631 F1 Veteran
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    Feb 24, 2011
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    Just put the carbons back on. Check out the rear wheel comparison. Probably should be 20/21 from the factory.
     

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  19. islandtrader

    islandtrader Formula Junior

    Jun 30, 2013
    369
    Excellent, thank you for your insight. Can't wait for this beast to arrive.
     
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  20. RayJohns

    RayJohns F1 Veteran
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    It's pretty subtle; I'm not sure you'd be able to really feel it in a car.

    Even with a motorcycle, it's somewhat hard to detect, unless you know what you're looking for. I think even on the track, unless you were a world class rider, you probably wouldn't feel it all that much. You might see it in lap times, however. On a bike, a lot of the benefit has to do with the lower gyroscopic effect imparted into leaning the bike into and out of corners - something which isn't really a factor with a car. In other words, your car tires aren't leaning over 45+ degrees when going through a corner at 70 miles per hour. However, on a motorcycle, that often is exactly what is happening - and not only that, as you come out of the corner, you've then got to bring the bike back up to 90 degrees upright. Even so, outside of maybe a professional rider being on your bike, it's pretty hard to detect.

    The place you can actually feel it most (on a motorcycle at least) is over bumps in the road. Here is an example:

    My house is at the end of a private road, which is maybe 1 mile long and which goes through the forest. So on the way home, there are a few areas in the paved road where large tree roots have grown across and caused little raised areas in the road. Every time I used to take my Yamaha R1 out, I'd generally steer around those areas or go slow over them, so that it would not launch the bike too much.

    So when I was getting ready to install the new BST carbon fiber rims, I decided to start specifically going over those bumps in the road, in order to see if the new wheels made any difference. So right before I was going to install the carbon rims, I took my bike out one last time and specifically rode over a bunch of different bumpy areas. I went for about 10 miles, hitting specific areas in the roads and on the freeway. I made mental notes of how it all felt, then turned around and rode back home to swap rims.

    Okay, so at home, I put the bike up on stands, pulled the wheels off, swapped over the new carbon fiber rims, balanced everything, then put the bike back together and took it out over the exact same course and exact same bumps as before. Like I said, it was very subtle, but you could definitely feel the improvement. When going over the areas of the road where there were roots causing little bumps (which would normally sort of launch the bike or unsettle things), it just went over it nice and easy - "blip, blip". The first time I hit the bump, I was expecting it to unsettle the bike, but instead it just blipped across it like almost nothing. The effect of going over the bump was about 1/2 as noticeable.

    I should add that my R1 had full Ohlins race suspension that was tuned to my weight. It also had super bike valving in front, which was designed to break away differently than normal valving. Even friends (who also had R1's) would comment on what a difference there was between their bikes and mine - even just from sitting on the bike in the garage. Even just sitting on it, my bike had a very "razor sharp" feeling to it. So that probably helped to telegraph more of the benefits from the carbon fiber rims too.

    Also, as you mentioned, there was a bit more of a brutal quality to the acceleration. Not overly so, but there was definitely a sense that the bike was rocketing forward a bit more quickly than before. In fact, after installing the carbon fiber wheels and doing some other modifications (mainly dropping overall weight and modifying the exhaust and fuel mapping), the bike became so terrifyingly fast that I couldn't really hold WOT for more than about 2 seconds before it started to really frighten me on the street. I also had my gearing off in the back by 1 tooth, so the bike had a tendency to want to power wheelie a little bit. But even just holding the throttle open for only a second or two and suddenly you'd find yourself going 125+ MPH. If you think your Ferrari is fast, try riding a modified Superbike sometime haha :) It's the closet thing to feeling like you're strapped to a jet engine that there is. It's unreal.

    Anyway, my guess is that on the Pista, the benefits from carbon fiber rims are probably going to be pretty hard to detect. I would think that the largest benefits would be a reduction in stresses on the suspension components. I would also tend to think that in corners, you might be able to obtain slightly higher lateral G's over uneven roads. Braking and acceleration should be slightly improved, but I doubt you could detect it - short of using a stop watch or tape measure.

    Another thing you want to be aware of - when dealing with super light carbon fiber wheels - is the impact that the weight of the tires themselves can have. Not all tires are created equal - and you might be surprised at how much of a difference there can be in the weight of exactly the same size tires from two different manufactures. On my motorcycle, I ran only Pirelli tires. They perform the best and also are some of the lightest tires out there. By contrast, the exact same size tire from another brand can weigh sometimes 2 to 3 lbs more (each). This added weight can have a very large mitigating impact on your brand new light weight rims, because the weight of the tire is at the extreme outer edge of the rotating assembly and therefore it has a much larger impact on MOI than going from alloy wheels to carbon wheels has. This might be a more critical factor on a motorcycle. Nevertheless, it would be a shame to spend $25K on high performance rims, only to inadvertently counteract a lot of the benefits in MOI by simply installing a tire that a few pounds heavier than another brand.

    With that said, it can sometimes be rather difficult to obtain accurate tire weights from manufacturers in grams. If you call the companies themselves, hoping to get the information, that's usually a dead end. A lot of companies, which produce overly heavy tires, aren't real eager to disclose the fact that their tires weigh noticeably more than their competitors. This is true of rims as well. I remember I spent weeks trying to get the exact weight of Marchesini wheels in grams from the people in Italy. Despite a number of phone calls and emails, nobody would ever just tell me how much the wheels actually weighed. In the end, you just get a lot of "well, it depends..." or "we aren't sure, we'd have to check" or "maybe about 7 or 8 lbs" - that sort of BS. In the end, you either have to find someone with a scale and the actual wheels and/or tires - or you just have to go out with a scale yourself.

    That's actually what I ended up having to do with my motorcycle tires. I finally gave up trying to get the information over the phone and just went to several local race shops (who had the tires in stock and for sale) and asked them if I could weigh the tires with my little gram scale. They thought I was nuts, but nobody really cared much either way. What I discovered, in the end, is that different brands of tires can have significantly different weights.

    And as mentioned, it's not just the overall weight. It's more about where the weight exists relative to the distance from the rotational axis. That's the most important aspect of all this. You can have two rims which weigh exactly the same - but if one has more weight concentrated closer to the center, it will perform much, much better as far as its moment of inertia is concerned. At the end of the day, better MOI is what it's all about - and that's usually where carbon fiber wheels can't be touched. The outer rim in carbon fiber simply has far less weight to it than when made from aluminum or even magnesium.

    Anyway, food for thought :)

    Ray
     
  21. ScrappyB

    ScrappyB Formula 3

    Oct 3, 2017
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  22. Golattus

    Golattus Karting
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    Dec 15, 2017
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    I’ve had BST CF wheels on my track bikes and removing the tires is an issue as scratching them is very easy.

    Best way to remove them is cutting the inner steel ring on the sidewall. It’s is a 20 sec operation and you remove it easily.
     
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  23. Gh21631

    Gh21631 F1 Veteran
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    Feb 24, 2011
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    Great spec! That is gorgeous.
     
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  24. Caeruleus11

    Caeruleus11 F1 World Champ
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    Jun 11, 2013
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    Excellent post, thank you!
     
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  25. Caeruleus11

    Caeruleus11 F1 World Champ
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    Jun 11, 2013
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    Beautiful Pista!
     
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