Hi all,
So one aspect of the Roadster I want to work on / upgrade are the wheels. I find that the 16" fronts make the car way to twitchy and unstable when traveling above 70mph. Also we all know how much of a pain it is being stuck with the front tire size and limited tire choices due to that size. What I'm looking to address this is a 17" front and 18" rear, also going wider to fill in the Roadster better.
I did some research and found a very reputable custom wheel maker, BozeForged, who make some pretty awesome wheels: Boze Alloys - Custom billet wheels and forged wheels
With that, I contacted them to a do a "feeler" on their company as well as with my idea of creating a new set of wheels for the Roadster. My requirements were a light but strong wheel. They came back saying that the "mesh" design is the wheel for that. They recommended going with the "Daytona" or "Performance" wheel in the "Xclusive" series to fit this requirement. The representative I spoke with was very professional, knowledgeable, and gave me a great impression about the company. Also many well know celebrities / race car drivers have used Boze to create wheels for their personal cars, so they do have a good reputation that's well established in the wheel business.
Below are pics of the mesh wheel choices:
Boze Alloys - CUSTOM FORGED WHEELS
Daytona:
Performance:
With these wheels you have a wide variety of paint and design in the way these wheels will look in terms of finish to suit your taste, so there's lots of room here for uniqueness. Also if you are not after weight/strength you could go for some other wheel design in their pick-list.
As for tire sizes I'm looking at the following sizes which appear (in theory / calculations) to work with the 1.5 traction control system since we're fixed on the front to rear tire rotation:
Front 205/45R17
Rear 235/40R18
These wheels are not "drilled & filled" wheels to make some off the shelf wheel work on the Roadster. I consider drilled & filled dangerous and would not throw that type of wheel on my car unless its in a museum. These will be a fully custom one piece forged wheel made to order.
I'm also looking at putting a little stagger/dish into the rear wheel. But I don't want to adversely affect the handling performance of the wheel which the dish effect does. But I want to see at what point the loss in handling occurs and if with our offsets it may or may not adversely affect it. I'm putting functionality/handling as a higher priority over looks. But you can design the wheel however you may like to suite your personal needs.
Also I'd like to either trailer my Roadster down to Boze Forged's shop in Laguna Hills, CA, in order to have the technicians look at the car, properly measure the car, and offer expert advice on what numbers/offsets, etc, we should be running in order to make the Roadster hook up the best it can when cornering on the tarmac. If there's a Roadster owner who lives close by who can offer their time for this measurement that would be fantastic and save me a 12 hour round-trip hauling my Roadster down there on my truck/trailer.
As for the cost of the wheel, its not all that bad. For the fronts I was estimating the cost to be around $550-$650 per wheel and the rears to be $750-$850 range fully built.
With the group buy, what I found on the Internet is that BozeForged will waive the shipping cost if there's multiple buyers. I didn't find anywhere that a group buy was able to get a discount on the wheel cost itself. Looking at the cost per wheel I think its rather reasonable and can't complain, especially when you look at the cost of the Tesla Wheels.
Feel free to discuss, but this is an idea I've had brewing for some time.
So one aspect of the Roadster I want to work on / upgrade are the wheels. I find that the 16" fronts make the car way to twitchy and unstable when traveling above 70mph. Also we all know how much of a pain it is being stuck with the front tire size and limited tire choices due to that size. What I'm looking to address this is a 17" front and 18" rear, also going wider to fill in the Roadster better.
I did some research and found a very reputable custom wheel maker, BozeForged, who make some pretty awesome wheels: Boze Alloys - Custom billet wheels and forged wheels
With that, I contacted them to a do a "feeler" on their company as well as with my idea of creating a new set of wheels for the Roadster. My requirements were a light but strong wheel. They came back saying that the "mesh" design is the wheel for that. They recommended going with the "Daytona" or "Performance" wheel in the "Xclusive" series to fit this requirement. The representative I spoke with was very professional, knowledgeable, and gave me a great impression about the company. Also many well know celebrities / race car drivers have used Boze to create wheels for their personal cars, so they do have a good reputation that's well established in the wheel business.
Below are pics of the mesh wheel choices:
Boze Alloys - CUSTOM FORGED WHEELS
Daytona:
Performance:
With these wheels you have a wide variety of paint and design in the way these wheels will look in terms of finish to suit your taste, so there's lots of room here for uniqueness. Also if you are not after weight/strength you could go for some other wheel design in their pick-list.
As for tire sizes I'm looking at the following sizes which appear (in theory / calculations) to work with the 1.5 traction control system since we're fixed on the front to rear tire rotation:
Front 205/45R17
Rear 235/40R18
These wheels are not "drilled & filled" wheels to make some off the shelf wheel work on the Roadster. I consider drilled & filled dangerous and would not throw that type of wheel on my car unless its in a museum. These will be a fully custom one piece forged wheel made to order.
I'm also looking at putting a little stagger/dish into the rear wheel. But I don't want to adversely affect the handling performance of the wheel which the dish effect does. But I want to see at what point the loss in handling occurs and if with our offsets it may or may not adversely affect it. I'm putting functionality/handling as a higher priority over looks. But you can design the wheel however you may like to suite your personal needs.
Also I'd like to either trailer my Roadster down to Boze Forged's shop in Laguna Hills, CA, in order to have the technicians look at the car, properly measure the car, and offer expert advice on what numbers/offsets, etc, we should be running in order to make the Roadster hook up the best it can when cornering on the tarmac. If there's a Roadster owner who lives close by who can offer their time for this measurement that would be fantastic and save me a 12 hour round-trip hauling my Roadster down there on my truck/trailer.
As for the cost of the wheel, its not all that bad. For the fronts I was estimating the cost to be around $550-$650 per wheel and the rears to be $750-$850 range fully built.
With the group buy, what I found on the Internet is that BozeForged will waive the shipping cost if there's multiple buyers. I didn't find anywhere that a group buy was able to get a discount on the wheel cost itself. Looking at the cost per wheel I think its rather reasonable and can't complain, especially when you look at the cost of the Tesla Wheels.
Feel free to discuss, but this is an idea I've had brewing for some time.
Last edited: