Mike Jesse

Here is a pic of my Blackstone carbon rims I put on my HD 1200R.

From the moment I first let the clutch out I knew they were worth every penny.

Roll on and turn in were not quite night and day difference.

A bargain at $2800.



https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...1&d=1510905853

stew1100

WOW that is awesome.

I wonder how many of them are out there, and who has them in their shop?

Powdergod

The ESE Carbon Fiber wheel. It weighed 10lbs after powder coating.

Powdergod

So your wheels weigh approx 118lbs as opposed to 46lbs. I would say 72lbs (18lbs per corner) of unsprung weigh is substantial and something that would be easily detectable with your butt dyno.

Hemi Dave

My local tire shop has one..... $20 per tire

KSA Aaron

I run BlackstoneTek (BSTs) on my GSXR L bikes. They are an awesome wheel and have had no issue with any of them.

KSA Aaron

I did not know that one could powdercoat a CF piece. I thought it had to be alloy and conduct electricity. Hmmmm...

KSA Aaron

I do believe the first C7 with CF wheels may indeed be white...


I am thinking right at 10 lbs front, just shy of 12 lbs rear.

Mike Jesse

I weighed mine on a certified 100 lb. capacity freight scale.

Front...56 lbs. even.
Rear....63.4 lbs.

Tires have only 2900 miles showing.

Hopefully this winter I will reduce the weights to 45/50 lbs. respectively.

Newton06

For that price, you could get 16 HPDE events in.

Imagine how much faster & more confident of a driver you'd be afterward.

Just saying...

And I doubt these would hold up with slicks or hitting FIA curbing at speed.

Expensive street candy is what they are.

Powdergod

That's why I'm a powder coater and you're not.
That's also why the company is looking at me to coat them. Most people in the business wouldn't take the liability of possibly damaging a $3K wheel in the process, not worth the risk. When I did the sample wheel I was concerned more about the adhesion as we can't blast them for proper texture and didn't want the worry of a customer having powder flaking off his $12K wheels. So I did the "hammer test" to it. I'd been told of this test before and thought it was good but completely amazed when other coaters had said their customer actually took a hammer to their part to see if it was true. REALLY, what morons. While the powder may not flake or chip off from a hammer hit, surely there could be other damage to the substrate from hammer whack. But this was a throwaway sample. I laid the wheel on the floor and took a regular claw hammer and whacked it extremely hard to see what effect it would have. To my surprise the initial whack left a 1" dark gray spot on the center of the spoke. I wiped my finger across it and found that it was the dirt from the hammer head deposited onto the surface. After wiping the spot there was no physical remains from the hit. I took the hammer and whacked it again in the same spot and there was no evidence of anything. I was now secure in not worrying if the powder would flake off.

Phoenix64

That article is PURE ford propaganda. The GT350R tires are an inch shorter. Effectively changing the gear ratio from 3.73-3.90. Those acceleration times are garbage. The wheels are worth nothing. Here it's all explained.

Powdergod

Wrong, The video you posted used a stock GT350 with aluminum wheels and Michelin Pilot Super Sport tires and a 370 gear against a GT350R with Michelin Sport Cup 25 tires and a 390 gear. The numbers I posted were done with a GT350R with stock CF wheel/tires and then ran the same car with the heavier GT350 Aluminum wheel and tire package. Your test compared apples and oranges. My test compared wheel and tire package only.

Phoenix64

Watch the video again! The whole point of video is that those acceleration times in the C&D article are due to the TIRE SIZE difference NOT the weight!

The video makes the point that the 1in tire difference in the C&D test(gt350 vs gt350R) is THE SAME as swapping the 3.73 gears to 3.89. The test is completely flawed!
The coast down times are at least a little bit scientific, but that article is pure 100% ford propaganda BS

Also Due to how physics works the Cup 2 tires that are 4lbs lighter and 1in smaller diameter than the MPSS save MORE rotational inertia than the CF Wheels.

That's what everyone forgets when using these lazy rules of thumb like
"4lbs of rotating mass = 4000lbs of vehicle weight!"
Where that rotating mass is located is all that matters!
If I shave 1lb from the tread of the tire that's worth infinitely more than 10lbs saved at the wheel hub.

Suspension reaction times is a whole different argument but for acceleration times (your claim) all that matters is the radius of that weight

Powdergod

Okay, I Digress. I went back and watched the video again and understand what he is saying. An accurate test would be to have like diameter rubber on both wheels to see what the weight saving in the wheel alone makes. I believe that test alone would provide significant differences. The ESE wheel compared to the stock Corvette wheels saves over 15lbs per corner of rotational mass.

Phoenix64

I totally agree that there would be a measurable change.
There was a test in GMR magazine where they added 1in wider wheels under the exact same tires on a civic to test - "Aero drag of wider wheels"

The car did accelerate slower, but what struck me is that the acceleration change started at 0 mph...

The conclusion to the article was that aero drag even hurts 0-30 mph times......

What they inadvertently proved was that adding weight to the barrel of a wheel hurts acceleration times on a 100hp civic. The effect was much smaller than the GT350 example though.

Notice the coast down times from the C&D article have a 3% advantage for the CF wheels where as the acceleration times have a 9% advantage.
The smaller diameter also plays a role there because it has greater rolling resistance, and more bearing and brake drag, so the wheels and tires are worth <3%.

But don't forget that the cup2 tires reduce more rotational inertia than the CF wheels so...

So we can conclude that the GT350 wheels are worth about 1%.

Totally worth it at the price of these corvette wheels, since they save quite a bit more weight than the GT350 wheels.