Get out the windex, the new trend is wheel design is here!!

Get out the windex, the new trend is wheel design is here!!


http://www.mobilemag.com/content/100/354/C10295/#

Wednesday November 1, 2006 3:41 PM EST - By: Michael Kwan

Car enthusiasts are like kids in a candy shop when they walk into SEMA. It truly is the granddaddy of them all, the absolutely best car show there is. We see some of the craziest innovations there, and today is no different. First, we saw spinners. Then, we saw wheels with LEDs in them. And now, D'Vinci Forgiato has come up with clear wheels. Yes, clear. As in absolutely transparent.

Apparently made of "Lexan or something", they give the appearance that your tire is simply floating around your disc brakes. The reps say that these wheels are just as safe as any other wheel on the market, but I'd imagine it'd be a bit of a pain in the you-know-what to clean out the brake dust. There are also versions available for motorcycles.

You're rolling on dubs? D'Vinci Forgiato is rolling on clear... like deodorant


http://www.engadget.com/media/2006/11/clear-wheel.jpg

http://www.mobilemag.com/content/images/10295_large.jpg

It's probably pretty easy to clean the front, but to clean the back you'd have to take the wheel off. F that.

:cool:

:shock:

While the wheels seem to be more of a 'car show' item then anything else, but I could see people tinting the (what I assume to be) polycarbonate with different colors and/or patterns.

These have been around for a while. IIRC no one's been able to certify them for road use yet. It's one thing for polycarbonate to be able to support the weight of a car tooling down the road at 70 mph; it's quite another to be able to withstand the shock loads of hitting curbs, or the torsional forces of 1 g cornering.

Don't brakes need some type of openings in the wheel in order to cool them??

That disc brake under glass (or whatever it is) sure looks like it could create a pretty good oven inside that rim. :think:

Don't brakes need some type of openings in the wheel in order to cool them??

That disc brake under glass (or whatever it is) sure looks like it could create a pretty good oven inside that rim. :think:

The whole backside of the wheel is open so there's plenty of room for air to circulate around the brakes, especially on a spinning wheel. For the vast majority of cars, that's all that's needed to cool the brakes. Recall that most cars on the road can come with plain stamped steel wheels covered with plastic wheel discs, a design that certainly doesn't let much air through.

Sounds like they talked to an expert there:

Apparently made of "Lexan or something",
:lol:

As far as keeping them clean. Some windows in really tall office buildings get titanium oxide put onto them and the 'clean' themselves when they are hit with sunlight. I read about it somewhere but if it works it would be a good way to have the look and keep them clean at the same time.

Dont know how I feel about that.

Maybe you can put some rain x on them to help keep the dirt off.

I think those are pretty slick, but the appeal would wear off after awhile once I had to remove them every couple of weeks just to clean the backside.

Intriguing but a bit stupid :shrug:

cool idea, but not on my car.... id like to see them on a bike tho?

These have been around for a while. IIRC no one's been able to certify them for road use yet. It's one thing for polycarbonate to be able to support the weight of a car tooling down the road at 70 mph; it's quite another to be able to withstand the shock loads of hitting curbs, or the torsional forces of 1 g cornering.

Getting them to stand up under that sort of use when the material is new is a relatively simple engineering task, but I'd hate to see what happens to them once they've been exposed to sunlight for a couple of years (polycarb and UV are not good friends).

Getting them to stand up under that sort of use when the material is new is a relatively simple engineering task, but I'd hate to see what happens to them once they've been exposed to sunlight for a couple of years (polycarb and UV are not good friends).

You should be able to apply a coating that blocks UV, similar to how they coat polycarbonate eyeglass lenses (although it would not be cheap). Or a simpler solution could be to laminate a material on the outside. My concern would be stress at the point of attachment to the hub and rim. Any holes drilled for fasteners are going to magnets for fractures.

Anyone get the feeling that the car aftermarket, especially for ricers, is dictating what's hot and what's not, just like the fashion industry has done for eons? You know, "safety orange is the new black." "These wheels are the next big thing" {waves Jedi hand}.

My concern would be stress at the point of attachment to the hub and rim. Any holes drilled for fasteners are going to magnets for fractures.

My ME co-worker that was walking the show with me pointed out the same thing in, oh, about 2 seconds.

Looks pretty awesome to me.