1985 Hayashi Racing "Palace" wheels — a couple questions

Thanks for this! This is the very website and snippet of history that gave me the clues to start a more exhaustive investigation.

I tracked down Gene Howald himself and had some long email exchanges with him, covering many topics both Hayashi and HRE. Pretty fascinating stuff, and he's quite the guy!

 

Are the spokes white on yours? Hard to tell in pics. Maybe you could post a detail shot or two?

 

Yes, I've seen this before. Though the Palace and 505 are not the same thing.

See my several comments above re: Gene Howald, Hayashi, HRE (the company) and the origins of both this wheel and the HRE 505.

 

This is awesome! Yeah, those are authentic Hayashi Raving wheels, vintage '87.

Thanks for sharing!

 

- J3 = casting lot number
- H.T. - heat treat lot. Hard to tell whether the character next to it is Japanese, but it appears as though it has a second crossmemeber in the photo. Might just be a dirt mark.
- Year of manufacture is indeed '87
- Sticker shows offset (-2mm), PCD (pitch circle diameter, which = lug bolt pattern), and month/day of manufacture during the year in the casting. Gene Howald decoded MY sticker date/date casting (which reads "02407) as July 24th, 1987. I am somewhat confused as to what your date numbers mean in this case, BUT I think an educated guess using mine as an example along with Gene's decoding of it, it seems logical that we drop/ignore the first digit, then the next two digits = month, next two digits = day. In your case (assuming this is correct), that would mean your date of manufacture for that wheel is Oct 17th, 1987.
- 8"x16" fronts, 9"x16" rears

I notice your rears have black bolt heads, while the fronts have chromed bolt heads. Is it possible that each pair came from different sets? Further decoding of all your stickers and castings will tell you for sure.

Valuation for mismatched wheels or an incomplete set will be considerably lower than a matched set.

What will you be replacing them with? I dunno... I may be interested.

 

One other thing Gene mentioned that might help you in valuation:

"Hayashi used their own assembly hardware that was quite unique…their name was embossed in every piece. It costs a lot of money to make the tooling to produce “proprietary” branded hardware, but it was one of the unique elements of every Hayashi wheel… and now today, every HRE wheel.

This protects the company from someone replacing hardware with components of inferior grade. Yes, it does happen…people disassemble the wheel and strip a bolt or nut. So they simply replace it with something that looks similar without ever realizing that the hardware was rated to perform under certain loads and must be “matched” to the wheel specifications."

You might check the the assembly hardware to see if they're embossed. If the assembly hardware has been changed out, their value drops significantly, as they are no longer original, and... as far as I've been able to ascertain... original hardware is not available anywhere any more. I've had conversations with Hayashi themselves in Japan, and with Vessel Tool, who did the actual manufacturing of the wheels in-period... to no avail.

Mine look like this:

 

Keep in mind... Your wheels are definitively not HRE wheels.

It is pure coincidence that Hayashi Racing Equipment and HRE share the same initials. The founder of HRE himself has stated to me directly that HRE stands for Howald Racing Enterprises.

Can you clarify what wheels your buddy sent to HRE for a refresh? I don't quite follow your meaning there.

Are you saying he sent a set of Hayashi Racing wheels to HRE, and they were willing / able to refurb them for him? If that's the case, then I'm damn near 100% certain (depending on the year of this event) that if HRE did a refurb on a set of Hayashi wheels, the wheel assembly hardware would be a (correctly-spec'd and HRE-embossed) set of HRE hardware—not Hayashi hardware.

From a strength standpoint, HRE hardware's suitability is unimpeachable, as they have all the data from the wheels themselves (castings and stickers) and could match the bolt and nut specs up perfectly with the wheels.

It looks to me from your photos, as you've said, that one set of two has original Hayashi assembly hardware and the other set does not.

 

That's sorta what my guess was... good to know! That's awesome.

Was the work done on the black bolted wheels by a known (to you) reputable source who chose suitable hardware?

 

My thoughts:

To buy, not hard, no. To find... a little harder, as you'll need the specs of the original bolts to match them. Just depends what those numbers are. This is not the sort of thing you can just run down to your local Home Depot and grab.

Hopefully, HRE can / will be willing to help with both the finding and the spec'ing. Wheel manufacturers are often quite cagey about providing things like bolt torque specs, as that number is often dependent on the wheel application. I just went through this with a set of Work forged wheels a few weeks ago, and struggled to get a straight answer out of them over a number of specifications. Not saying this will be your experience... but it's something you may have to deal with.

The reason is liability. Incorrectly spec'd OR installed wheel assembly hardware can be quite dangerous, and can shear under load, and if I'm HRE, I don't want that responsibility.

Expensive? I'd say between $120-$240 for a set of 80 pcs (40 per wheel) forged stainless bolts and flange nuts—which is what these wheels came with... enough to redo 2 wheels.