What happens if your brakes don’t fit your new wheels or vice versa? One thing you shouldn’t do is shave the wheels to fit like this Grade A idiot who should be banned from cars for life. Read on.
Oh, dear, dear, dear where do I begin with this post and how did this car driver get this far in life without seriously injuring himself or worse, others. According to a Facebook post that caught my eye from Chunyujing77 this auto enthusiasts major f-up in China earlier today (Nov. 26, 2018) is sweeping the web for just how stupid it is. Some Honda Civic Type R owner thought it would be a good idea to shave the back of his wheels, removing precious structural integrity from them, in order to clear his new brake setup.
Check out the story in photos below, no translation needed. Just in case that post below goes blank before I find out, here’s a mirror here!
A bit of good guesstimating and it looks like these wheels are Rays Gram Lights 57Transcend. Stock wheels on an FK2 Civic Type R weigh around 24 pounds while these $8,000/set replacements (Ya, they’re $2,000 a piece as per Science of Speed) weigh in at a light 17 pounds. Altogether, that’s a weight savings of 28 pounds of unsprung weight, the difference between winning and second place in a close circuit race.
Rays wheels, and specifically Gram Lights, are synonymous with engineering excellence and lightweight, thus the high price. You can go for a replica design but it won’t be as strong or as light.
Going back to this grade A idiot, it looks like he either upgraded to new wheels or brakes and they did not mesh together. Shaving the rear of the wheel, he basically made it fit but wrecked the structural integrity of the wheel. He might’ve gotten away with a bit of around the town driving but when he took his Civic Type R on the circuit, it’s another story altogether. Forces beyond normal driving situations wrecked his wheel resulting in it exploding in fantastic fashion.
No word if he came out OK but I’m assuming he did given the lack of major damage to his vehicle.
Who does that, destroy the structural integrity of a wheel like that? Unbelievable.
Source: Facebook.
