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MG MGA - Colyn Firth ..wheels

Hi Col. Trying to find out the source of the wheels that you have got, for a customer here in Australia. Please let me know the brand.
Gary
Gary Lock

Hi Gary, hope you and Anita are having a great Christmas.

The replica Dunlop alloys were on my car when I bought it so I can't say for certain where they came from.
There are two possible sources here in the UK,
Realm engineering or Racemettle and below are the links to their websites. (I could be easily be wrong but I would think that probably only one of these companys actually manufacture the wheels.)

https://realmengineering.com/d-style-wheels/

http://www.racemettleltd.co.uk/wheel.html

My wheels are the bolt-on version and they do have one peculiar characteristic, they don't really balance properly if you use the central hole to mount the wheel on the wheel-balancing machine.
I had to find a tyre supplier who could balance the wheels using the wheel stud holes , before I got them satisfactorily balanced.

There are some issues with the three versions that are designed to fit the MGA.


Bolt on version.
As well as the balancing problem, there is also a bit of "slop" in the fit between the wheel nuts and the actual holes in the wheel and you have to centralise the nuts in the wheel and the dummy spinner plate cut down "off-centre" shimmy.
I temporarily fit two standard tapered wheel nuts to help centralise the dummy spinner plate, before then fitting two of the actual wheel nuts.
I have attached a pic of my wheels.

The knock off version.

This is designed to fit MGA with wire-wheels seem to be well designed with no issues at all. The only noticeable feature of these is that the central spinner protrudes outwards more from the wheel centre than the original TwinCam wheel spinner does.


The TwinCam peg-drive knock-off wheel.
According to Dominic Clancy, this wheel as supplied by Realm Engineering came with a 14 mm wheel-spacer to fit on the hub between the to prevent the wheel from fouling on the brake calliper.
This had the effect of significantly reducing the number of turns that the spinner would rotate before it locked the wheel. Dominic believed that this was causing a safety issue and would not accept the wheels.

Hope this is helpfull



Colyn Firth

Here's a picture of two MGAs which have different versions of the alloy replica Twincam wheels. (Both of the cars in the picture are the 1600 Mk I model).

The car front is Stuart Mumbys car which has the knock-on version which fit on his wire-wheel hubs.

My car (behind Stuarts) has the bolt-on version of the wheels.

If you zoom in on the picture you can see that the spinners on Stuarts knock-on wheels protrude quite a bit further than those on my car which has the bolt-on version

Cheers
Colyn


Colyn Firth

Gary, one of our guys down here fitted the racemettle ( I believe) wheels to his Mk2 Deluxe when they first came available around 2012 and a wheel came came off in a motorkhana competition! The upshot was there was a manufacturing error in machining that prevented them from being tighten properly. They were fine after he had it corrected. The company gave him a spare wheel as compensation. Assume this error corrected in later production. They were peg drive wheels that were wider than standard Deluxe/twin cam wheels.
Mike
Mike Ellsmore

beware of the realm wheels, they don't leave enough thread available on the hub to engage the spinner sufficiently. IIRC the TC spec calls for 6 or 7 thread turns for safe engagement, the two sets of realm wheels I encountered allowed only 2 1/2.

Dominic Clancy

A couple of guys here had issues with knock on minilite replica wheels on MGBs so probably the same issue would arise with an A
The problem was with the spinners not having enough thread as Dominic notes, but the real issue was the wheels were bottoming out on the ends of the studs holding the rear brake drums on meaning the inner cone wasn't reaching it's seat and holding the wheel out too far--

willy
William Revit

Hi Dominic,
hope things are going well for you in SE Asia.

Have you had any experience of the wire-wheel knock-on version of the Realm alloy wheels?
I know that you found that the peg-drive Twincam knock-on wheels don't fit well and don't leave enough thread to safely secure them to the hub.

I wondered if the wire-wheel knock-on version had the same problem.

I will check to see if the wheels on my friends wire-wheel car have any similar problems.


Going back to my BOLT-ON version, I did originally have problems with wheel balance.

I discovered that the central hole in the wheel was not in fact exactly in the centre of the wheel. This made it very difficult to have the wheel and tyre combination balanced because most tyre suppliers fit a tapered nut to this central hole fasten the wheel to the balancing machine.

Once I found a company who could use the stud holes to fix the wheels to their machine, I found that the wheel balance was much better.

But there was at least 1 mm of slop between the wheel holes and the wheel nuts this could cause an annoying vibration through the steering wheel at certain speeds.

After some experiments I found that I to go through this procedure to correctly centre them on the wheel studs.

I first had to fit them loosely onto the wheel studs and then place the dummy spinner plate onto the studs.

I then use two standard tapered MGA wheel nuts fitted onto a pair of opposite studs and tighten them a little, which pulls the dummy spinner plate into a central position on the hub.

Then I fit the correct wheel nuts onto the remaining two wheel studs and tighten those a little.

Then I remove the temporary tapered wheel nuts and replace them with the last two correct wheel nuts and finally correctly tighten all of the nuts.

Once I began to use this method of centring these wheels, I have no further problems with wheel balance.

Cheers
Colyn

Colyn Firth

Sounds a bit dodgey Colin, can't you find some nuts the correct diameter for the wheels or make up some sleeves for the nuts you have already---It sounds like a good whack on the wheel or hard braking would/could make the wheel move on the hub-
willy
William Revit

VTO wheels look the goods to me. Peninsula Sportscars in Sydney are the agents. Great spline drive alloy wheels to suit MGAs
https://www.vtowheels.com/
Mike
Mike Ellsmore

I had some interest in these wheels for my MGA rather than having to continue to replace snapped chrome plated steel spokes (with stainless) on my chrome wire wheels. (I've had to replace about fifteen so far. Two more have now snapped and need replacing).

I considered my three options to be:

1) Rebuilding my present wheels (professionally), with stainless spokes throughout.
2) New CWW wheels, Dunlop, or preferably Dayton.
3) Replace with these Dunlop replica Twin Cam style wheels.

However, I have to say, I am astounded by all the issues I have read here with these wheels.
1) The bolt on types are difficult to centre and to balance because the central hole is not in the middle. Really? !! So you muck around with tapered nuts and the supplied ones gradually doing them up to centre the wheel. Really? !!
2) The knock off types may not have enough turns on to the splined hub to mount safely. You gotta be kidding!
3) The knock off variety sit out too far.
4) The wheels might actually BREAK !!!!

So with mounting shortcomings, and structural concerns, these wheels sound to me like they are a safety hazard. Such a shame cause they look great and would be so much easier to clean than CWW.

Why is it that time and again reproduction parts have issues? Sometimes it is just frustrating because the repro part looks wrong, fits wrong or falls apart prematurely (rubber parts).
But when it's your wheels, your life and your passenger's life, (and perhaps other people too) depends on your wheels fitting securely and being structurally sound. What I read here suggests to me that using these wheels constitute an unacceptable risk.
T Aczel

If I was looking to buy some alloy wheels for my MGA, for cost reasons alone, I would probably go for something like the Minilite, which I have always liked the look of on a classic car, most likely the VTO wheels that Mike suggested.

They are probably far less expensive than than the Realm/Racemettle wheels and hopefully have none of the potential safety problems.

My wheels are now at least 15 years old, although they have only done around 35000 miles in that time, so there may be some element of wear and tear which hopefully would not be present on a new set.
It would be interesting to check the fitting of a brand new wheel to see if this is the case.

But as I already have these (£300 each) wheels and I have admit that I do love the look of them, I am considering having all of the stud holes machined to be exactly the same size and position. Followed by then making up a set of new oversize wheel nuts machined to fit the holes perfectly.

My brother has offered to help me with this project, fortunately, he is a retired engineer with all the machining equipment he needs to help me fix the problem.

But I have to admit that if I was looking for new alloys, I would want some that fitted perfectly from the start.

Cheers
Colyn


Colyn Firth

Colyn, while appearances are very much a personal thing, to me at least, the Minilite wheels look too modern for an MGA.

What's more, the narrowest rim available for a 15" Minilite wheel seems to be 5.5". For a car originally fitted with a 4" or 4.5" wide rim, even with the narrowest tyre for a 5.5" rim (175), for me at any rate, the "look" is just not right for an MGA.

So my original three options are now just two!
T Aczel

Hi Tom,
you are correct, it is all about personal preferences.

I have always considered the Minilite wheel to be the look of the 60s, I think they look amazing on a classic Mini and so I suppose that is why I also like to see them on an MGA.
Probably better than a set of Rostyles would look.

On the subject of wheel width, I have to admit that I do like to see a set of wheels and tyres that fill the wheel arches. I know that I am probably in the minority here.
I understand that the ride and handling is probably better with the standard width tyres, but I am really happy with both the handling and how well the car looks with wide wheels and tyres on my MGA.

We had a similar conversation recently on one of the forums and someone said that the original narrow wheels and tyres look better on an E-Type Jaguar, than the later wide wheels and tyres.

I have posted a couple of E-Type pictures comparing the two and I definitely like the look of the wide wheels more. I have always thought that the wheel arches look a little empty with the narrower wheels.

Will let you make up your own minds. :^)

Cheers
Colyn







Colyn Firth

Colyn, while we are getting rather off-topic here discussing E-Types, with the earlier six cylinder E-Type cars, my impression was always that the front wheels were too far inboard, rather than too narrow. To me too those front wheel arches always looked rather odd.
This was addressed with the subsequent V12 models (though overall I much prefer the looks of the six cylinder two seater models).
T Aczel

I just have to say, Early E's look fantastic with a set of wheels on them but man, there's a lot of carefull measuring has to happen for offsets etc,if you want to run the same wheels on both ends--I had a fair bit to do with a couple of E's preparation for Targa Tas. and only being allowed 6 wheels for a weeks racing everything needs to fit anywhere on the car, we got the best combo with 15 x 7's with some minor clearance mods to the rear subframe brackets but that's the biggest you can fit under a std. body with racing clearance
They really do look better and handle lots better with some rubber under them
willy
William Revit

Apologies to Gary for wandering off topic (at least we are still discussing wheels! :^)

But it is good to have someone to talk to about MGAs (and cars).

Have a great New Year guys

Cheers
Colyn
Colyn Firth

The answer to Colyn's lat question is no. I found the guy at Realm so unreliable and tricky that I would never recommend dealing with him, and strongly recommend the use of a credit card for payment as that was the only thing that got the money returned for his defective product
Dominic Clancy

I have always liked the alloy wheel look - this is my race car back in the 80s with American Racing magnesium wheels and in the 90s back on (real) Dunlops.







Bill Spohn


Since I bought the car in 2016 I have used minilite. Safe and strong for cornering on mountain roads in "animated" driving. can be seen here:


https://youtu.be/BHCiN_YMcnM
Gabriel Martínez

And Realm wheel quality issues surface, again.
https://www.mgexp.com/forum/mgb-and-gt-forum.1/realm-wheel-owners.4459161/
T Aczel

This thread was discussed between 23/12/2021 and 02/02/2022

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