Wheel and Tyre Fitment: Construction
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Construction
04.43
| 00:00 | After the previous module you should now have a good understanding of the basic structure of the wheel, but there's some more variation past this, around their construction that we need to cover off. |
| 00:11 | Essentially, how many pieces there are to the wheel and if there are multiple then how they fit together. |
| 00:17 | More specifically there are one, two and three piece wheels, at least common to modern performance wheels anyway. |
| 00:25 | Wirespoke wheels are a whole other story, but since they're generally not used on modern vehicles, especially when we're concerned with performance, we won't be considering them from here on out. |
| 00:35 | We'll start with the most simple, being the one piece wheel, which is also the most common. |
| 00:42 | As you'd expect, this is when the centre disc and barrel are all one piece. |
| 00:46 | The term monoblock is also commonly used here but this generally applies to wheels that are made from a single piece of material, like in the forging and machining processes rather than casting, but we'll be discussing these processes in more detail soon. |
| 01:02 | This is a generalisation but single piece wheels will usually be stronger, stiffer and lighter than the equivalent two and three piece wheels. |
| 01:11 | But there's always exceptions to this and there are plenty of single piece wheels out there that are much weaker and heavier than quality two and three piece wheels of the same size. |
| 01:21 | Two piece wheels are when the centre disc and barrel are separate parts and these are either fixed together with hardware or welding or a combination of both. |
| 01:30 | The barrel will have another flange on the internal diameter to allow for this. |
| 01:36 | The advantage here is mostly in flexibility from a manufacturing standpoint, where the same centre disc can be used with different barrels, widths, offsets and designs and vice versa, where different centre discs can also be used on the same barrels. |
| 01:51 | At the end of the day, this determines what's available to us so it's usually possible to get multi piece wheels in a wider variety of sizes and designs. |
| 02:02 | Finally, three piece wheels, as you might have guessed, have an inner and outer barrel, often called halves, both with mounting flanges to fix to the wheel face with hardware and are often also welded. |
| 02:15 | Sometimes the face is sandwiched between the flanges on the halves and other times it's bolted to the front, which will be more important when it comes to measuring these later in the course. |
| 02:28 | Three piece wheels offer the most flexibility in sizing and the hardware is also an aesthetic feature depending on what look you're going for. |
| 02:35 | Of course, this flexibility isn't just for the manufacturer and we can modify the sizes of these wheels ourselves if we want to change them from the original specs, even purchasing the faces and barrels separately. |
| 02:49 | Getting the perfect size wheels for a car can be difficult, especially for more custom setups, so building them out ourselves is about as satisfying as it gets. |
| 02:59 | To be clear, we're talking about fixing the halves to the centre disc with hardware, which is a fairly straightforward method, rather than welding them together, which really requires specialist equipment. |
| 03:11 | As you'd imagine, we just need to make sure everything is torqued correctly and to finish off, the gap is sealed using some quality silicon sealant. |
| 03:21 | Finally, although the term split rim is used for multi piece wheels, this also refers to a different design where the outer lip of the barrel is a locking ring that can be removed and changed, offering flexibility just like our two and three piece wheels. |
| 03:38 | These were commonly used on older vehicles, typically four wheel drives, meant for off roading like the Toyota FJ40. |
| 03:45 | This style of split rim is not suitable for performance applications for many reasons. |
| 03:51 | The main one being that they can be prone to exploding under pressure, sending debris flying, which is clearly not something that we want to be involved in. |
| 04:00 | In summary, wheels are generally split into three categories when it comes to construction. |
| 04:05 | One, two and three piece wheels. |
| 04:08 | One piece wheels tend to be the lightest, strongest and stiffest, all of, which are important factors to performance, as we'll discuss in more detail later in the course. |
| 04:18 | Two piece wheels are where the centre disc is a separate part from the barrel, whereas three piece wheels, the inner and outer barrels, are also separate and are often referred to as halves. |
| 04:29 | These multi piece wheels offer more flexibility in terms of sizing so the manufacturer can provide a wider range of options or we can rebuild them to our desired specifications. |
