This video describes how to select and install custom wheels and tires for your automobile. It is much more than finding a style you like.
There are many factors to consider to ensure that your choices compliment both the appearance and performance of your particular car.
We explain the critical specifications that both the wheel and tire must meet and the proper method to mount them to your favorite ride.
Transcripts
Rick Robinson: Hi! I am Rick from Springfield Motorsport and we’re here today to talk about selection of custom wheels and tyres for your car. This is one of the most personal style of choices an owner can make. It is one of the most visible characteristics of your car and there is a wide range of choices. Your first consideration is how you will use the car and the wheel/tyre combination. is it a daily driver and durabilities and driving manners are most important? Is it going to be mainly a show car and maximum bling is your goal? Or you going to drive it on the dragstrip and performance is critical. Use is the primary driver in wheel/tyre selection.
First we’ll talk about selection of the style of wheel for your car and then we’ll consider the different size parameters that you have to take into consideration when selecting that proper wheel. Next, we’ll talk about selection of the proper tyre to go with that new wheel, and then we’ll get into the proper installation of the wheels and tyres for your car. And then we’ll wrap up with what to do with that old set of wheels and tyres that you took off your car and then the maintenance of those new wheels to keep them looking good for a long time.
During our discussion of installation, we’ll cover the proper safety factors and tools for use on this job. When making that selection of wheels and tyres for your car, one of your biggest assets is going to be the Internet. There are many sites out there that show many different styles and types of wheels as well as the proper tyres that will work best for you.
Now before we begin, let me tell you a little bit about myself. I am Springfield Motorsport, we’re performers automotive center and we do performance and appearance upgrades on cars. For a long time we’ve specialized in Ford vehicles, particularly Mustangs, but we’ve recently expanded other offering to the Chrysler and Dodge, Henry Community as well. Okay, I think we’re ready to begin; let’s get started.
Custom Tire Selection – Style
Transcripts
Rick Robinson: Hi! I’m Rick from Springfield Motorsport and we’re here today to talk about selection of custom wheels and tyres for your car. In this segment, we’re going to talk about the various styles of wheels that are available and the parameters that you need to consider when you select a wheel for your car.
What I’ve got here is one of the original wheels from the 90s, early 90s vintage Mustangs. It’s not as plain as to some of the wheels production cars, but not as fancy is what you see in the custom wheel market today either.
Now one of the first things you need to consider when you select your wheel and your tyre is, how you’re going to use the car. Is this car going to be daily driver where you have to consider durability of both the wheel and the tyre? Is going to be primarily a show car where maximum bling is the goal that you’re looking for?
Or is performance on the dragstrip the most important factor to you? All of these things have to be taken into consideration as you pick out the proper wheel/tyre combination for your vehicle.
Now in making that choice, one of the most important factors is the sidewall of the tyre. The height of the sidewall determines several things. One is how much impact the tyre can take on the road. So if this is your daily driver, you want a tyre that’s going to be able of absorb shock from potholes and bumps on the road and so forth and is going to give you fairly comfortable ride as you’re driving this car around all the time. If this car is going to be primarily a show car, that’s not as much of the consideration and style and today the style leans towards large wheels, narrow sidewalls, is going to be more important to you. In drag racing again that sidewall height is critical. If you look at the videos from drag racers as they launch from the lights, you’ll notice that the sidewall of the tyre wrinkles up as the torque of the axle is applied to the wheel. That twisting and wrinkling of the tyre allows the tyre to maintain its grip on the pavement as the car accelerates. If you’ve got a large diameter wheel with a very narrow stiff sidewall, it’s not going to do that, tyres going to break loose and spin.
Probably the next thing you’re going to a consider is the style of the wheel itself. As I said, this is an early 90s vintage Mustang wheel, not bad looking in its own right, but there are many other wheels that have much better styling to them. Here we have one of the popular aftermarket wheels in the Mustang market. This particular wheel is originally designed by Saleen for the Saleen Mustangs. It’s one of the standard in five-spoke designs that are very popular. This particular one is I wants power coated white, so it’s going to have match the accessories of your car and blend well with the styling of your car. There are other of course colors available black, gray, and so forth to fit better with your particular car.
Here we have an excellent example of the some of the latest styling in the wheel market. This particular wheel was designed and built by Carroll Shelby Wheels. It’s in 20 Inch diameter rim, and you’ll notice again the factor that we talked about before, the sidewall of the tyres itself in order for the wheel to be in the proper diameter for the car, the sidewall of course has to be much narrower to go with this 20 Inch wheel and of course is going to affect the performance of the tyre on the street, but it looks great.
Coming up in the next segment, we’re going to talk about specific size parameters that you need to take into consideration when choosing that right wheel for your car.
Custom Tire Selection – Size
Transcripts
Rick Robinson: Hi! I am Rick from Springfield Motorsport and we’re here today to talk about selection and installation of custom wheels and tires for your car. In this segment, we’re going to talk about specific size parameters that you have to take into consideration when choosing that right wheel.
One of the first parameter to consider is the diameter of the wheel. Now we talked earlier about how that affects the overall size in the sidewall of the tire itself. There are some other things that you can take into consideration too. What kind of brakes do you have on a car, is it the stock brakes that came on the car or have you upgraded the brakes to the larger size? If you have, that brake has to fit inside this wheel.
Larger brakes require a larger wheel or you’re going to have problems in here in clearance between the wheel and the brake. For example, a 13 inch cover brake requires at least a 17 inch wheel to clear it, a 14 inch brake requires an 18 inch wheel and so forth. So first thing to consider from both, appearance and a fit perspective is the diameter of the wheel itself. The second factor that we’re going to consider is the width of the rim itself.
Again the use of the car comes into play here, how am I going to use this car? What size tires do I want on a car in order to support that particular use? Now if I want to be able to rotate tires on a daily driver to maintain proper wear patterns, I have to have the same size wheel on all four tires. The typical production car comes with either a seven or an eight inch wide rim on it.
To support larger tires for performance use, for example, we’re going to need a wider rim to support a wider tire to give us more of a footprint on the ground. In many performance cars today, the owners like to have a staggered look. A wider tire in the rear than they do upfront So you might put a nine inch wide rim upfront and a ten inch wide rim in the back, giving more grip on the rear wheels for acceleration and a better overall look to the car.
Now the third and most misunderstood factor in wheel selection is a parameter called offset and a complimentary parameter called backspace. Both of these measurements are in relation to the hub face of the wheel, which is this portion right here, where the wheel mounts to the axle of the car. We’re going to move to a diagram of the wheel to give you a better idea of what these parameters look like.
In this offside diagram, you can see how these parameters are measured. First of all we start with a center line of your wheel and how it relates to the hub face that we saw in the earlier frame. The distance between he hub face and the center line of the wheel is what’s referred to as offset. The distance from the center line to the very back edge of the wheel, is what’s referred to as backspace. Now if the hub face is on the back side of the center line, in other words, closer to the interior of the car, then the exterior is referred to as negative offset.
You saw this a lot back in the 60’s with the Deep Dish Chrome wheels. It was very popular look back then. Today, most of our cars have positive offset. In other words, the hub sits outside of the center line of the wheel and the spokes of the wheel sit more towards the outside of the wheel. So when considering the choice of wheels for your car, you have to have the proper offset or the wheel is not going to fit on your car. Now before you can in get excited about a particular wheel and how it will look on your car, the first parameter you have to look at is the bolt circle.
The bolt circle determines whether or not that wheel has even got a bolt up to your car and the bolt circle, of course, is the circle of the bolts that attaches the wheel to your hub. This particular wheel is for Ford Mustang. It’s the standard 5 bolt, 41/2 inch bolt circle. So make sure you check your manufacturer’s handbook and you know what bolt circle is required for your car before you even start shopping. Now in the next segment, we’re going to switch to new tires and the selection of the proper tire to go on your new wheel.
Choosing Custom Wheels and Tires
Transcripts
Rick Robinson: Hi! I’m Rick from Springfield Motorsport, and we’re here today to talk about selection of custom wheels and tires for your car. In this segment, we’re going to talk about tire selection. Once again, use of the vehicle is the most important factor to start with and selecting the right tire. This is going to be a daily driver or you’re going to be driving in all kinds of whether and you really want to stay with an all-season tire as opposed to going with the high-performance tire that typically uses a rubber compound, that doesn’t do well particularly in icy, snowy conditions, and often don’t do well in the rain as well. Or again are you going to be campaigning this car on a dragstrip and you’re really want and all our performance tire that gives you maximum grip. First thing to consider when selecting your tire. So first of all let’s talk about how the size of the tire is described in the first place. You’ll notice on the side of the tire is printed 245/40ZR20. The 245 is the width of the tread on the tire. It’s not the overall width of the tire itself but it’s the width of the tread and it’s in millimeters. So this particular tire 245 millimeters wide at the tread.
The second parameter 40 is called aspect ratio, and we’ll come back to that point. The third parameter is the 20, which is the overall diameter of the bead of the tire which has to match of course the diameter of the wheel that you chose. So this particular tire is a 20 inch tire. Now the aspect ratio, this is the parameter that’s often confusing to people. It’s not an actual dimension. It is the ratio of the height of the sidewall of the tire to the width of the tire.
So on this particular tire, being a 245 millimeter tire, the sidewall height is 40% of the width of the tire. That’s what the 40 stands for. So this particular tire is 98 millimeters high on the sidewall height and as we discussed in the earlier clip, that’s a very important factor in the performance of the tire. More sidewall height, more flex, more grip. Narrower sidewall height, better look, but less grip from the tire. Now the last parameter we’ll mention, is the letters that are in the tire, rating on every tire. In this particular one, it’s a ZR rated tire. The Z is an indication of the speed capability of the tire. In this particular case, this one is capable of speeds in access of 150 miles an hour. Again important thing, how you’re going to use the car and how you’re going to use this tire in the kind of performance that you expect out of this tire.
Now the last parameter consider in selection of your tire, is the tread pattern and the tread compound of the tire itself. A wider or more open tread pattern is going to shade water better, it’s going to perform better in wet conditions. A slick tire is going to give you a better grip because you get more rubber contacting the road, but it’s not going to do well at all on the wet road. Softer compounds have better grip but higher tire ware, a harder compound is going to give you more durability, but again is not going to give it the same traction that other compounds will.
So consider how you’re going to use the car, the kind of driving conditions that you going to be in, and study this carefully before you make that selection. So now that we’ve talked about all of this factors, that you have to consider in the selection of the proper wheel and tire for your car. In the next session, we’ll talk about installation.
Custom Tire Installation
Transcripts
Rick Robinson: Hi! I’m Rick Robinson with Springfield Motorsport. And we’re here today to talk about selecting custom wheels and tires for your car. In this segment, we’re going to cover the installation process. Here we have our brand new Carroll Shelby wheels, it’s important when if you’ve these shipped to you, that you check them carefully when you get them. I want to make sure there is no damage to the box. Take the wheel out, and over the wheel particularly the edges of the wheels, pull that off and make sure that the edge of the rims are all in good shape and there is no dangerous scratches.
After the tire installation process, this is the machine that does all the work. Couple of important things to consider when selecting the right shop to install your tires on your new custom wheels, is if they’re going to take good care of those expensive new wheels. On our machine, we use these plastic guards on the clamps that hold the wheel in place, it grips the inside of the wheel and protects the edge of the rim from any damage, when we’re installing the tire.
If you’ll notice the teeth on the back side of this one. These are commonly used by your everyday tire shops, they grip the inside of the rim. But you never ever you use this on a set of aluminum custom wheels because it’ll chew up the inside of your rim. This is the head unit, this does all the heavy labor. This is what actually puts the tire on the wheel and takes it off. You’ll notice the protective Teflon liner on the inside of the head unit here, that again protects the edge of your rim from any scratches or damage, during the installation of the tire.
Okay, so we’ll start by putting the wheel on the machine, and next we’ll install the valve stand. Whenever you get new tires on your wheels, always have been change the valve stand. Make sure that you don’t get a leak there. What he’s checking now is the direction of the tire, many of the today’s performance tires are directional. You’re going to make sure that you get it on the rim correctly for the side of the car that you’re going to put it on. He’s going to loop up the bead real good, so that it’s slides over the rim smoothly and on the wheel it goes.
Large low aspect tires like this, often take a lot of manipulation that get him on the rim correctly. And here’s where an experienced tire shop becomes important. Now we’re gong to inflate the tire to lock the bead in place. You hear the bead pop in place. I want to inflate it with the proper pressure and it’s ready to balance, don’t forget your valve cap. Okay, now it’s time to balance our wheels to make sure they perform well on our car. When having this done, make sure that you specify to your installer, what type of balance weights do you want him to use on the wheel?
I’m showing you three different types here today. This one is the old style knock-on weights we call them, long used on the old steel wheels, they’re hammered on to the edge of the wheel. Obviously not something you want to do on a new custom aluminum wheel, it’ll chew up edge of the wheel. it’s not going to look good out there on the outside of your tire. This is the newer type of weight. It has an adhesive backing on it. We stick it on the inside of the wheel, so that it’s not visible from the outside of the car and doesn’t damage the wheel.
Now a new type of full weight that’s just recently come out is called exact balance. Instead of being a solid led weight it actually a vital tube, it gives you a better dynamic balance of the wheel as the shaft moves around inside the tube, during rotation. Now we have our new wheel and tire mounted up on a balancing machine, and we got check it to see how much weight is required to balance this wheel and where it needs to be on the wheell.
So let’s give it a spin. You’ll notice the arrows on the display will tell me exactly where that weight needs to be. It needs to be right there at that point on the wheel, and this one only requires a quarter of an ounce which is pretty good for a wheel and tire of this size. So now, I’m going to install the weights on this wheel, give it one more spin to check it. Then we’ll move to the car and show you how to install it on your car.
Custom Tire – Mounting to the Vehicle
Transcripts
Rick Robinson: Hi! I’m Rick Robinson with Springfield Motorsport and we’re covering today the proper selection of custom wheels and tyres for your car. This is the installation process and if you’ve chosen to order a pre-installed set of wheels and tyres for your car, this is the point where you’ll get involved with actually putting them on the car yourself. We mentioned earlier that we cover some of the safety aspects of that. If you’re going to do this in your driveway or your garage, make sure that you’ve got the proper tools and that you know how to safely jack the car and remove the wheels from the car. You’re going to use some basic tools.
First of all, something to remove the lug nuts from the car. Your car with a lug wrench, it’s properly sized for the original lug nuts that are on a car. If they’ve already been changed once, it may not be the correct size and you make sure you’ve get the right socket. Now one thing about socket selection. The new custom wheels often have a recessed opening in the wheel where the lug nut is installed. You want to make sure that your socket fits comfortably inside that hole and that is not going to scrape against the edge of the hole as you install the lug nut, or you’re going to chew up that nice new finish on your new wheels.
If you’ve got locking lug nuts or anti-theft lug nuts on it, and you make sure that you’ve got the key for that particular lug nut in order to be able to get it off the car. The tool that we’re going to use to remove the lug nuts is called an impact wrench, commonly used in all shops that do this kind of work. If you’re doing this in your garage or your driveway, you’re not going to have this, again you want to make sure that you’ve got the proper tool that’s going to work on your car. When we put the new wheels on, we’re going to use the torque wrench to make sure that the lug nut is properly torqued for your car, and is not going to come off when you’re driving down the road. We’ve got the car up on lift. Certainly, a handy device for doing this kind of work, gets all four wheels off the ground.
We can go right through the process and get it done very quickly. If you’re doing in on your driveway, you probably going to do this one wheel at the time with your jack and with the jack stand to safely keep that vehicle up in the air while you get that wheel off. We’re going to use our impact wrench and get the all wheels off the car. First of all, we’re going to take our locking lug nut, install the proper socket, and spin. Got the old wheel off the car, I’m ready to put the new one on. Again, with directional tyres you need to make sure that the direction of the tread is pointed in the correct direction for this particular wheel. Okay, we now get a new wheel up here, we’re going to put lug nuts back on and making sure to that socket fits comfortably inside that hole and doesn’t scar up your new wheel.
We’ll get off all five lug nuts started by hand first, and then we’ll snug them up. Now we’ll go to our impact wrench and on a very low pressure setting we’ll spin the new lugs on there. We want to alternate sides as you’re doing it to make sure it tightens up evenly. We’ve got the new wheel temporarily installed. Now we’re going to tighten it up with a torque wrench. Again, alternating on opposite sides of the wheel as you go to make sure it tightens up evenly and there we have it.
So that’s a process for installing your new wheels and tyres on your car. Coming up we’ll discuss disposal of your old rims and maintenance of your new ones.
Maintenance Disposal of old Wheels & Tires
Transcripts
Rick Robinson: Hi! This is Rick Robinson with Springfield Motorsport. We’re here today to talk about selection and installation of custom wheels and tires for your car. Now we’ve just finished the installation process, got a nice new wheel mounted on the car. Now what do we do with this old one that we just took off? As you can see this one is a pretty descent wheel in it’s all right, certainly it still has some value to it.
Your choices are either to keep it yourself as a spare, in case you ever need to put it back on the car for some reason. To resell them, someone else could certainly get could use out of this or if you want to leave them with your installer and let him dispose off them for you.
How would maintaining these new wheels? As I mentioned earlier, todays custom wheels have a clear coat finish on them to protect them from corrosion in the elements. You want to make sure that you take good care of that. You want to use good non abrasive cleaner whenever you’re cleaning your wheels and use either a cotton teary cloth or one of these microfiber towels, to make sure you don’t scratch up the surface. Wash them thoroughly, when you’re watching your car and then use a cleaner and your towel to finish the job. They’ll look great for years to come.
As an example, let me give you a quick demonstration. I’ve got a low abrasive paste cleaner here. I’ll use my microfiber towel, get the little bit on the towel, and then just clean that in a surface of to get all the smudges and the water spots off out. Simple as that, okay, that’s a demonstration, we’ve covered all the tips on how to properly select new custom wheels and tires for your car. As you can see on this vehicle, it can dramatically change the look of your car.
