Edumacate me on OEM vs aftermarket wheels

[Beagle]

coker has every size of 15 ....c mon dude ...no problem getting 15 and 16 at work

derail = on

Corky Coker can suck it. I wouldn't buy ANY tire from him.

Derail=off

You have Z rated 16's ?

[Huskinhano]

Jim, that 17" rim clears the upper ball joint and that is a big help on a relatively narrow fender. 14,15 & 16 inchers are to the side of the ball joint and severely limits my tire choice. Genrally a 205 tire is about as wide as it gets. The 17" wheel gives me the options of going up to a 235 tire.

[mike343sharpstick]

I think 17's look great on older cars as long as the tires have enough side-wall.
Good luck on your decision.
There are some good 15's (and 13's lol) that are made for the vintage road race market, but I prefer 17's for various reasons.

[Huskinhano]

This isn't my 66 but this is what the wheels look like on a 66. Pictures cam from Corral.e The owner is running 275's in the back. My car sits a little bit lower, top of front tire is about even with the wheel opening.

[andy30thz]

I spent A LOT of time looking into this before buying my 18" 2010 GT500 replicas this spring.
I think it depends on what you want to do with the car. The quality of most Chinese replica wheels is suspect, but the price is pretty cheap for a decent looking aluminum wheel.
From my understanding a lot of OEM wheels are made in China, but they are held to higher standards and are PRESSURE cast.
ALL of the cheap China wheels are GRAVITY cast, making them less dense, more porous and obviously not as strong.

I saw a BUNCH of nasty looking cracks and failures of cheap china gravity cast wheels when doing my research. BUT! Most of the failures were due to extreme lateral loading by guys using them for open track days. Guys just street driving them, or mild drag applications didn't seem to have many issues.

The main complaint seemed to be bad wheels right out of the box that were bent, or heavy on one side to the point where they wouldn't balance.

I had my wheels put on the balancer straight out of the box, so we knew to the best of our abilities that they were straight and balanced. So far so good, they seem OK. I will say the quality is only OK, but for the price, I feel its to be expected.

The really nice CCW, True Forged or Weld wheels I was looking at for my car were $650....EACH!! There is no way that was in the budget! But the quality was OUTSTANDING!
I have a set of stock wheels with my autocross tires on them for my higher lateral loading adventures!