CNC ALUMINIUM WHEELS

[seanCHASSIS!]

Hey guys,

Are there many teams out there that have made their own wheels from scratch? Specifically from aluminium. We're a new team and are considering going this route, but we're still not settled on anything yet. Any info will help.

Sean
UOIT MOTORSPORTS
CHASSIS http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif

[Agent4573]

If your a "new" team I wouldn't be worried about CNC'ing your wheels right now. I would be more worried about the important stuff. I know having a nice set of wheels will make the car look good, but if it doesn't run and stay together is doesn't matter. I would suggest buying a set of wheels for the first year or two, then once all the major stuff on the car is hacked out you can worry about customizing your wheels.

[James Waltman]

Sean,
Do you want to machine the entire wheel or just the centers for a multi-piece design? Several teams have machined their own aluminum centers. A few teams have done carbon fiber shells. I machined our centers this year so I might be able to answer any questions you have. Some pictures of ours are here. (http://dot.etec.wwu.edu/fsae/HostedPics/Viking38/Wheels/Wheel_Centers/)

I would post a picture of Denny's wheels here but the search feature has been really bad lately. There was a thread a while ago where several teams posted pictures. If I remember correctly the Oklahoma guys had a sweet set too.

Agent is probably right though. It took us quite a while to design and manufacture ours. Time a team could have spent on other important stuff.

[Cement Legs]

Agent 4573 has hit it right on the head. There are not even going to be enough hours to do everything else the way you want including tunning your engine, setting up suspension, testing..... its all going to be about compromises. Make a list of priorities and put the wheels at the bottom. Dont even start with the stuff at the bottom until you are finished the items that are critical to running the car. Having said all that .... once you get you car running 'BLING BLING'

[kozak]

james if you don;t mind me asking what do you use on the back side of thoes cap head screws.

[seanCHASSIS!]

Thanks for the link,

I do realize that this would extremley time consuming, and judging by your comments it does seem stupid to do this first year, but we thought that since we'd have to fork out the $$ for rims, we might be able to machine our own, but probabbly not. James, the rim that you used to mount your centers, is that from last seasons wheels, or did you trun that from scratch?

sean

[James Waltman]

Kozak,
We were going to use nyloc nuts. Do you have some other idea? The bolts that hold the wheels together in those pictures were just my fixture bolts. We may use a different set. I put some more pictures at that link with polished bolt heads and polished centers. I'm not sure what we'll use yet. We might even do them differently for our rain tires (paint, polish, or anodize and different bolts).

Sean,
The shells are from Keizer Wheels (http://www.keizerwheels.com/) . I'm cool with machining a lot of stuff but machining wheel shells/rims just can't be worth it.

[BStoney]

We machine our own centers down here at Cincy as well. Keizer inners and outers and then the Aluminum centers...

Use button head cap's and nyloc's to bolt them up.

[jack]

here is a shot of the back of the wheels. we used nylocks because i would rather die a slow death than safety-wire 64 bolts...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v318/phatcat0227/V38WheelRear.jpg