Topic: My 17" Snowflakes from Year One

[O'Neall]

These are the 17x9" Snowflakes that I ordered from Year One for my car.

I originally ordered them in natural (i.e. no paint) because I thought/think the Year One gold paint scheme didn't use enough gold, so instead I had JasonD (whose restoring my car) paint them gold for me as seen below.

"Natural" 17x9" compared to factory 15x8"


JasonD gold painted 17x9"






Year One gold 18x9" vs JasonD gold 17x9"


Just imagine mine with the factory center caps (with gold birds) and chrome lugnuts and with wide-meat ultra high performance tires.

[Joker (§ir£Ğragon)]

I like em. Much better with the darker gold and higher polish. Definitely helps with the "flat" quality of the ones direct from YO.

[logikfive]

They definately look better, but I really wish they didn't make them so flat looking.

[O'Neall]

I've always thought that these Year One wheels were more of a modern take on a 15x7" snowflake, than a 15x8" because they are flatter looking like the 15x7s tend to be.  Which, since my car is a 77 came with 15x7s, fits my car to a Tee.

All in all though... I think it's more a matter of how modern custom wheels are made in general... look at almost all of them and they tend to be on the "flatter" side.  If you look at those 15x8s above you can see that they were machined out of a single piece of aluminum, whereas the new ones have the snowflake pattern CNC'd out of a single piece, but are then welded to a "blank" wheel rim.  If they machined them out of one piece they'd be so hugely expensive that they'd probably be economically unviable.

[bandit nz]

O'Neall Nice looking rims dude and I love the bright gold you had painted on them.

I have to correct you on one point though, your right about the new YO wheel constuction, but the earlier 15x8 & 15X7 wheels were first cast as a one piece wheel complete with snow flake pattern.

Then the internal rim surfaces were then machined to clean up the rim, then the center snow flake face was machined giving it that mild machine look.
Then the outer rim was polshed and finaly the rim center was painted or coated.

This casting and machining method is the most economical way of producing magnisium alloy wheels, especialy in large volumes.

Cheers
Stu

[O'Neall]

Stu... thanks for the info correction about the factory flakes being cast and not machined... I guess that's why the call them "cast aluminum wheels"... d'oh!

And I think you're right... the process you detail above would probably be the most economical way to produce wheels on a large scale, like Western Wheel who had the contract with GM to make the snowflakes back in the 70s.  But it's really an issue of "economies of scale" in that start up costs to make them that way are very much more so than the modern CNC machined center way of today.  A modern aftermarket wheel company will have literally dozens (if not more) of wheels in their catalog (variety is the spice of life) and to produce them each in the casting manner you described would be hugely uneconomical.  That's why the CNC process has developed I think... because just about anybody CNC shop can do the cutting and they can therefore produce a large variety of unique wheel centers that they can weld to a common wheel rim relatively cheaply.

[bowtiecb]

those look much better lets getem wrapped so we can see some on car pics

[O'Neall]

My car's a ways from being done so it'll be a while, but I promise to post 'em up when I finally do get them mounted. 

[bandit nz]

Yep youd be right about the CNC system being cheaper for moderate production runs, CNC's are awesome for all that sort of stuff us car nuts like eh 

Those new wheels of yours look awesome and will look even smarter on the car, look forward to seeing the end result.

Thinking about CNC options, wonder what it would cost to get a totaly custom set made?
I have a friend here who owns a company called Arrow Wheels, they make race wheels for hot rods, drag cars and do alloy wheel repairs, check out www.arrowwheels.co.nz

I must ask Lance what it would cost to make a set, never asked him before, he has repaired some factory alloys for me in the past though.

Cheers
Stu
 

[WarbirdTA]

I love them!
They look super!
Jason does fantastic work.
Too bad he has the wheels, and not you, I would love to meet with you, and swap them onto my modded '81 Turbo Trans Am, just to see how they would look, over the black GTA thridgen wheels I have been using since 1987.
That is, if you would have let me.
Did you buy a fifth wheel, for a spare?

George 

[O'Neall]

At $500 per... no I didn't get a spare! 

[WarbirdTA]

Just don't get a flat on the next Bandit Run!
Maybe you can see if it even fits in the trunk,

George 

[Hitman]

How come you didn't leave the spoke polished?

[O'Neall]

I painted them all gold because if you look at the Year One prototype cars the gold was just waaay to washed out for my tastes.  Up close and at an angle you could see the gold, but from about 10 foot or more away, and especially directly from the side, you couldn't even hardly see the gold... and on a SE car you need to see the gold... having a great big silver wheel on an SE just ain't right.  Here's some pics of the YO cars/wheels showing what I'm talking about... everyone of these pics of of their gold snowflakes and IMO you just don't see enough gold on them (the reason being, because the spokes on the new YO wheels aren't as deep as original, so the surface area's just not there on the insides of the spokes to really bring the gold out).







Even on the toned down SE striping of the YO cars these wheels look to silver too me... let alone on a factory correct stripe job with tons and tons of gold stripes.  I immediately fell in love with the YO wheels from the moment I first saw them on the Prototype 1 car (the one in Hot Rod)... but right away I did have one complaint and that was the lack of visible gold on them.  So I decided early on to paint the entire snowflake pattern gold.

[Hitman]

Sounds good to me... and I agree.  Can't wait to see photos of those rims on your car.