I am one of those people that believe that good looking wheels are essential to completing any car. Good looking, APPROPRIATE wheels. For instance: I just cannot abide putting on good insert wheels on a car and just leaving them bare: just does not look right. Similarly, even though it might hugely aid handling, I also dislike small F1 size wheels with honking high profile tyres on an LMP car.
So from the time I started back in the hobby some 4 years ago, doing decent wheels have been another of the manifstations of my slight affliction with OCD.
Some examples:
One of the first cars I replaced the wheels on was a Slot.it Ferrari 312. There weren't any "correct" inserts readily available, so I used inserts of what-I-consider-to-be typical Ferrari wheels:
BWA wheels, BWA inserts. Correct? No. Plausible? Kinda: people used what was available in those years, so clearly some mechanic just grabbed one of the available Ferrari wheels... Note that I was able to put some of the wi.i.i.ide BWA wheels on the rear of this one: I asked Al to turn down the hubs so I was able to recess the hub on the sidewinder spur gear to fit partly "inside" the wheel. This thing handles like you would not believe!
Also an early modification: Lola with BWA wheels and inserts. One of my all time favourite cars in my all time favourite livery:
MB Slot Pagani Zonda: BWA wheels with original wheels turned down as inserts at the back. I also stuck the original disks and calipers behind the inserts. This car really needed metal wheels...
Fly Porsche 98 GT1: Slot.it rear wheels, original Fly wheels inserts
Scaley Nissan Skyline. BWA wheels with original wheels turned down as inserts at the back. Note that I also put the disks with calipers behind the inserts: looks very nice in real life.
Ninco 1 Megane: SCC LMP wheels.
Fly Racing Capri with a bit of a story: I really like the Pentosin livery. I also really like the Fly Racing performance. So I decided to do an uber-Capri: front engine Pentosin livery body, Fly Racing chassis. But the Fly Racing wheels looked blah. So regular Fly Capri wheels in front, BWA LMP wheels at the rear with regular wheels turned down as inserts. And I must say looking at it now, the home-brewed back wheels actually look better to me than the factory fronts!
Fast car: Fly by name, flies by nature...
NSR 997: nice car but the wheels look too small and the gold colour of the inserts is unconvincing. So I put bigger Slot.it wheels and inserts at the back and sprayed the inserts a brighter shade of gold.
Re-Mon Lola T70 to be used in this year's CanAm proxy. HRS2 chassis with SCC insert wheels with original wheels turned down as inserts
Scaley Big Red Camaro: we run a stock TransAm class so I have a few stock TransAm Camaros. On this one I broke the chassis at the rear bushing holder (doh!), so seeing as I had to do a bunch of repairs and stiffen the chassis in the process (making it illegal for racing) I thought I could just as well use the opportunity to build a "hooligan" Camaro with a 25k NSR Shark motor and better rear end. Wheels are SCC insert wheels, original wheels as inserts.
Spirit BMW 635 lowered and with BRM wheels all round.
This one is a bit "off": back wheels are too small, tyre profile too high. But these BRM wheels are so pretty... Started out as a Fly Racing Porsche 934 with horrid looking little "Stronium" wheels. Ended up with front wheels from the "regular" Fly 934 and BRM wheels at the rear.
SCX 'Cuda with HRS2 chassis used in last year's CanAm proxy. SCC Stock Car wheels
RevMon Shelby Cobra with an MJK brass chassis, used in the 2009 CanAm proxy. BWA wheels with original wheels as inserts.
I really do not have the skills to do real scratch building so I stick with the lightweight task of trying to do reasonable wheels...
